Student interactions with e-assessment > Student interactions
Question 20
How can e-assessment be used in group work, and what effect does the group element have on individuals' learning?
Peter Rowlett
Igor' Kontorovich
George KinnearWhat motivates this question?
Students are often encouraged by their teachers to work in groups, as they can benefit from learning from their peers. What are different ways that teachers (and students) currently use e-assessment tasks in groups?
Students are observed spontaneously forming groups for mutual peer support when taking e-assessment tests (Broughton, Hernandez-Martinez and Robinson, 2013).
When working on a quiz that provides random variants of the question, students working in a group may each solve different variants of the same problem but be able to have some discussion about the structure of the question – is this more or less effective than if they all worked on the same task?
Ordinarily students are discouraged from discussing summative assessment items as collusion (Seaton, 2019). Randomised questions offer the possibility to encourage discussion of such assessment tasks. Hermans (2004) points out, for uninvigilated tests, that “Instead of asking a friend, ‘What is the answer to question 3?’, they now have to ask, ‘How did you get your answer to question 3?’, which steers the interaction among peers in an educationally far more positive format.”
However, Rønning (2017) warns that “the variations in the problems from one student to another are such that it is possible to produce a general solution that can be copied”, and that “it can be seen that this happens to a rather large extent”, suggesting that parametrised question templates may not be sufficient to prevent plagiarism.
Other methods may be required. For example, the extent to students engage in peer interactions when interacting with e-assessment systems might be explored using social networking methods (Alcock et al. 2020).
What might an answer look like?
This could be based on a review of existing literature, and/or a survey of practitioners, to gather case studies of how e-assessment is used.
The specific case of small groups of students working on different random variants of the same problem could merit deeper investigation – perhaps a qualitative analysis of students’ discussion, possibly followed up with individual interviews to investigate the impact on each individual’s learning. There could also be scope for quantitative investigation, e.g. previous research has considered the effect on individuals’ learning of two-stage collaborative exams (Kinnear, 2020) which were paper-based, and this approach could be replicated with e-assessment tasks.
Related questions
- Q19: How can peer assessment be used as part of e-assessment?
- This could be seen as a particular case of Q13: How do students interact with an e-assessment system?, as it would involve students interacting with an e-assessment system – but in groups.
- The student response to feedback from the e-assessment system (Q15: How do students engage with automated feedback? What differences (if any) can be identified with how they would respond to feedback from a teacher?) would also be relevant here.
- Q14: To what extent does repeated practice on randomized e-assessment tasks encourage mathematics students to discover deep links between ideas? also considers repeated practice with similar problems, but from an individual rather than group perspective.
- The use of random versions is also relevant to Q24: To what extent does the randomisation of question parameters, which makes sharing answers between students difficult, adequately address plagiarism?.
References
Alcock, L., Hernandez-Martinez, P., Patel, A. G., & Sirl, D. (2020). Study habits and attainment in undergraduate mathematics: A social network analysis. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 51(1), 26-49. https://doi.org/10.5951/jresematheduc.2019.0006
Broughton, S.J., Hernandez-Martinez, P. & Robinson, C.L. (2013). A definition for effective assessment and implications on computer-aided assessment practice. In A.M. Lindmeier & A. Heinze (Eds.), 37th Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, Kiel, Germany, vol. 2 (pp. 113-120). Berlin: The International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education.
Hermans, D.F.M. (2004). CAA in Context: A Case Study. Maths-CAA Series, March 2004. Retrieved from http://icse.xyz/mathstore/node/61.html
Kinnear, G. (2020). Two-Stage Collaborative Exams have Little Impact on Subsequent Exam Performance in Undergraduate Mathematics. International Journal of Research in Undergraduate Mathematics Education, 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40753-020-00121-w
Rønning, F. (2017). Influence of computer-aided assessment on ways of working with mathematics. Teaching Mathematics and its Applications, 36(2), 94-107. https://doi.org/10.1093/teamat/hrx001
Seaton, K.A. (2019). Laying groundwork for an understanding of academic integrity in mathematics tasks. International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology, 50(7), pp. 1063-1072, https://doi.org/10.1080/0020739X.2019.1640399