Using Moodle

Effective Workshop Practices

The workshop is the most complex tool we’ve looked at so far. The extensive setup and management process can be daunting, which is why it is especially important to have a plan for how you will use the workshop before you start working. If you know in advance how you want the workshop to function, the important evaluation criteria, and how the students will interact with the submissions and with each other, you’ll save yourself a lot of potential confusion later.

There are a few important decisions to make before you get started:

• How many instructor examples do you want students to practice on?

• How many peer reviews can you reasonably expect them to perform?

• How long will you give students to submit? How long to perform assessments?

• How will you control the quality of the student assessments, i.e., how will you prevent students from just giving each other A’s?

• Do you want the workshop to focus on peer assessment or instructor assessment?

Once you’ve made these decisions, you have the beginning of a plan for your workshop. The last decision is critical in determining the shape of your workshop. I’ve been in classes where peer review was required but didn’t influence the grade. I’ve also been in classes where peer assessment counted for half of the grade I received on a paper. It’s important to decide this ahead of time so students know how much their peer ratings will influence the final grades.

If peer review is very important to the assignment, be sure to put ...