Integrating a peer evaluation module in a social learning platform

Abstract

Peer review is a valuable educational activity, especially in social learning settings, group work and project-based learning scenarios. It has the potential to foster critical thinking and reflection, expand students’ perspectives and understanding and increase engagement and interactivity. Several software tools for supporting the student peer review process have been proposed so far, but few of them are integrated in an all-encompassing learning environment. Therefore, our proposal is to extend an existing fully-fledged social learning platform, called eMUSE, with a peer evaluation module; the tool offers a wide range of functionalities, both for the student and the instructor. The peer evaluation is closely integrated with the educational social media tools and the project-based learning scenario; rather than focusing on a single written assignment, the module supports a more in-depth monitoring and assessment of peers’ work. The platform has been successfully used in practice and preliminary evaluation results are reported in the paper.