Construct peer assessment instrument using existing e-learning tools

Abstract

Work in Progress: This paper reports the study on how peer review instruments based on existing e-learning tools can affect the quality of peer review process and how this type of tools can benefit the reviewers. The study starts from a pilot study on constructing peer assessment instruments for an assignment in a Master course by using PeerMark and Moodle workshop. A comparison of these two tools has been given. Moodle workshop is more robotic, provide more options, but not very easy to use. Turnitin PeerMark is easy to use, more effective, but provides less options. Moodle workshop seems to have the potentials to facilitate guidance to the reviewers, feedback to the reviewers, peer interaction and knowledge construction better. A combination of the features of both tools should make a better peer assessment tool. Further investigation is required on how these tools can be improved or combined to organize a complex peer assessment marking criteria properly and to benefit the reviewers better. A plan for the next step research has been given, including further evaluation, software implementation and formal evaluation framework development.