Global learning partnerships in the Café: peer feedback as a formative assessment tool for animation students

This paper reports on a global learning partnership using the Café: the collaborative application for education as an e-learning environment within the Facebook framework, for first-year animation students at the University of South Australia (USA) in Australia and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. “The Café” has been designed based on five principles of user interface design – visibility, usability, relevance, accessibility, and interactivity – and aims to provide institutions with an established, structured, and dedicated e-learning environment that meets the needs of modern-day tertiary students and teaching staff. From July to November in 2013, 71 students participated within the e-learning environment. Students submitted work-in-progress imagery related to major assignments, and provided feedback and critiques to their local and global peers. A post-semester survey provided students with the opportunity to critically reflect on the learning experience. The results are discussed in light of the use of peer feedback as a formative assessment tool.

[1]  K. Topping,et al.  Formative Peer Assessment of Academic Writing Between Postgraduate Students , 2000 .

[2]  S. Hanrahan,et al.  Assessing Self- and Peer-assessment: The students' views , 2001 .

[3]  P. Duffy,et al.  Facebook or Faceblock: Cautionary Tales Exploring the Rise of Social Networking within Tertiary Education , 2011 .

[4]  Lan Li,et al.  Assessor or assessee: How student learning improves by giving and receiving peer feedback , 2010, Br. J. Educ. Technol..

[5]  P. Black,et al.  Assessment and Classroom Learning , 1998 .

[6]  L. Stefani.  Peer, self and tutor assessment: Relative reliabilities , 1994 .

[7]  Josh McCarthy.  Utilising Facebook: immersing Generation-Y students into first year university , 2009 .

[8]  Josh McCarthy,et al.  International design collaboration and mentoring for tertiary students through Facebook , 2012 .

[9]  Ru-Chu Shih,et al.  Can Web 2.0 technology assist college students in learning English writing? Integrating Facebook and peer assessment with blended learning , 2011 .

[10]  L. Fadel,et al.  Interface design for social interaction in e-learning environments , 2010 .

[11]  Anne Venables,et al.  Enhancing scientific essay writing using peer assessment , 2003 .

[12]  Josh McCarthy,et al.  Blended learning environments: Using social networking sites to enhance the first year experience , 2010 .

[13]  G. Gibbs,et al.  Conditions Under Which Assessment Supports Students’ Learning , 2005 .

[14]  Nicola L. Ritter,et al.  Undergraduates' Facebook use: evidence-based practice to implement social media in education , 2013, Int. J. Soc. Media Interact. Learn. Environ..

[15]  L. Ball,et al.  Students' perceptions of using Facebook as an interactive learning resource at university , 2012 .

[17]  Ari Huhta,et al.  Diagnostic and Formative Assessment , 2008 .

[18]  Mien Segers,et al.  Peer Assessment as a Collaborative Learning Activity: The Role of Interpersonal Variables and Conceptions. , 2010 .

[19]  Josh McCarthy,et al.  The Café: creating the 'collaborative application for education'; a dedicated e-learning environment in Facebook , 2013, Int. J. Soc. Media Interact. Learn. Environ..

[20]  T. Bosch.  Using online social networking for teaching and learning: Facebook use at the University of Cape Town , 2009 .

[21]  Alkim Almila Akdag Salah.  The online potential of art creation and dissemination: DeviantArt as the next art venue , 2010, EVA.

[22]  Diane Robbie,et al.  Engaging student social networks to motivate learning: capturing, analysing and critiquing the visual image , 2008 .

[23]  Yasemin Koçak Usluel,et al.  Modeling educational usage of Facebook , 2010, Comput. Educ..

[24]  P. Orsmond,et al.  The Importance of Marking Criteria in the Use of Peer Assessment , 1996 .

[25]  E. Mory.  Feedback research revisited. , 2004 .

[26]  Bernard Spolsky,et al.  The handbook of educational linguistics , 2007 .

[27]  Swapna Kumar,et al.  More than a social network: Facebook as a catalyst for an online educational community of practice , 2013, Int. J. Soc. Media Interact. Learn. Environ..

[28]  K. Topping.  Peer Assessment Between Students in Colleges and Universities , 1998 .

[29]  Irina Averianova.  Will Richardson. Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Tools for Classrooms. , 2013 .

[30]  Nigel Kenneth Pope,et al.  An Examination of the Use of Peer Rating for Formative Assessment in the Context of the Theory of Consumption Values , 2001 .

[31]  Mei Liu,et al.  Using the Facebook group as a learning management system: An exploratory study , 2012, Br. J. Educ. Technol..

[32]  S. Narciss.  Feedback Strategies for Interactive Learning Tasks , 2007 .

[33]  Winnie Cheng,et al.  Peer and Teacher Assessment of the Oral and Written Tasks of a Group Project , 1999 .

[34]  Josh McCarthy,et al.  Learning in Facebook: First year tertiary student reflections from 2008 to 2011 , 2013 .

[35]  Phil Davies,et al.  Computerized Peer Assessment , 2000 .

[36]  Yao-Ting Sung,et al.  Evaluating Proposals for Experiments: An Application of Web-Based Self-Assessment and Peer-Assessment , 2003 .

[37]  P. Rambe.  Critical discourse analysis of collaborative engagement in Facebook postings , 2012 .

[38]  Gila Kurtz.  Facebook group as a space for interactive and collaborative learning , 2013, Int. J. Soc. Media Interact. Learn. Environ..

[39]  Winnie Cheng,et al.  Making a Difference: Using peers to assess individual students' contributions to a group project , 2000 .

[40]  Mike Murphy,et al.  British Educational Research Association Annual Conference , 2009 .

[41]  Wing Lam,et al.  Web 2.0‐based E‐learning: Applying Social Informatics for Tertiary Teaching , 2011 .

[42]  Clare Brindley,et al.  Peer Assessment in Undergraduate Programmes , 1998 .

[43]  N. Webb.  Task-Related Verbal Interaction and Mathematics Learning in Small Groups. , 1991 .