Start date: 2 October 2006
End date: 30 September 2008
Funding programme: e-Learning Capital programme
Project website:
http://webpaproject.lboro.ac.uk
Committees: JISC Learning and Teaching committee
This project will make an open source version of an existing online peer
moderated marking system, for the assessment of group work, already in use
at Loughborough University since 1998. WebPA will also include a
number of significant enhancements that will help integrate good practice
being developed locally and at our partner site at the University of Hull
and will benefit the entire JISC community. It will build upon existing
evaluation and developments to the system, across a range of subject
disciplines.
The project will use a service-orientated approach within the e-Framework
for Education and Research. The new system will be piloted at
Loughborough University and the University of Hull and be developed within
the context of each institution’s VLE and online delivery (Moodle at
Loughborough and portal/learning services at Hull).
Aims and objectives
The project aims to:
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Make significant enhancements to the online peer assessment system
‘webPA’ (WebPA v0.8), designed at Loughborough University, to incorporate
changes based on evidence from pedagogic research undertaken at
Loughborough and Hull University; and technical evaluation to address the
need for more learner centred provision.
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Provide a mature open source peer assessment application (WebPa OS v2.0)
with the support of an active development community provided through the
Higher Education Academy Engineering and Physical Sciences Subject
Centres.
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Create and disseminate models of pedagogic use based on a current
literature review, findings from student and tutor evaluations regarding
the best practice in terms of formative and summative assessment
methodologies and with the engagement of employers.
-
Advance the service oriented approach for application development within
the JISC e-Learning Framework.
The project will carry out the following tasks.
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Literature review and exploration of potential pedagogical models to
evaluate
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Ongoing updates to existing application based on research and feedback.
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Work closely with Hull University in developments, both pedagogic and
technical implementation and further developments.
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Re-coding and re-purposing of application to make it open source and
service oriented.
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Student and tutor qualitative and quantitative evaluation.
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Documentation of technical approach and ongoing evaluation
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Guides and case studies for wider community
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Support for adoption in at least 3 further institutions
Project methodology
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Literature review and exploration of pedagogical models to
evaluate The project will perform a literature review on current
practices on the use of online peer and self-assessment, with respect to
the provision of flexible delivery. Also reflect on current reports
eg. Cox Review and Roberts Report to make recommendations to the
development of the application in light of the government recommendations
on making graduates more employable. The project will explore various
pedagogical models and research questions about online peer assessment
related to flexible delivery, learner-centred provision and the
engagement of employers.
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Host the online peer assessment for Hull University In
the first year of the project, Loughborough University will host a
version of the existing WebPA software for Hull University. Hull
will use it with students across two departments in Semester 2 of the
2006/2007 academic year. They will pilot models of use based on
current research-informed models by both partner institutions.
-
Ongoing updates to existing application based on research and
feedback Throughout the project the application will be revised
to support the outcomes of the pedagogic research being undertaken into
the different models for use. Each addition and enhancement will be
documented and tested before being released.
-
Re-coding and re-purposing of application to make it Open Source
and Service Oriented To ensure flexibility and reuse, the
existing application (WebPa v0.9) will be refactored to decouple it from
the specific technical environment at Loughborough University. The
core functionality of the application (personal info, group management,
etc) will be re-modelled to map to suitable service specifications,
including the IMS Enterprise Services Specification.
-
Student and Tutor qualitative and quantitative
evaluation During the first year of the project the existing
version (webPA v0.9) will be evaluated with both Loughborough and Hull’s
students and tutors to provide a large quantity of qualitative and
quantitative data.
-
Documentation of technical approach and ongoing
evaluation At the end of each year the project staff will
document the technical approach used and throughout the project will
contribute to community SIG’s, blogs, wiki’s and the e-Framework
knowledge base on the successes and failures of integrating within a
service based environment as well as information on starting and
sustaining open source projects
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Guides and case studies for wider community During Year
1 the Subject Centres will help to build up and disseminate resources
about online peer assessment. During Year 2, with the help of the
Subject Centres, the project will provide formal documentation in support
of the application and its use in various models of delivery and across
disciplines.
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Support for adoption in at least 2 further institutions
The Higher Education Academy Subject Centre partners in this project are
ideally placed to ensure dissemination and further uptake of this
tool. The Centres will identify at least 2 other institutions
willing to pilot the WebPA v1.0 software and with the help of the project
team, support the process.
Technological approach
The redevelopment of the existing system (WebPA v0.8) will address two main
technical goals. At the application level an object-oriented design
will facilitate maintenance and future updates to the code. This will be
particularly useful for institutional adoption and localisation where
functional changes are needed for local versions of the application. We
intend all code developments to be incorporated into the community code
base built up around the software. At the enterprise level, the
service-oriented approach will help institutions with the deployment of the
application, specifically when integrating with a VLE, or other information
systems, where no existing interoperability has been developed. The system
APIs will be available using both REST and Web Services technologies and
will restrict any integration effort to those services that require
institution specific data (such as student info, module cohorts,
etc). Specific integration experiences for local institutional needs
will also be shared with the community so others with similar technical
environments can quickly deploy based on that knowledge.
A version control system such as Subversion will be used to help us manage
and incorporate updates and additions made to the source code of the
application, particularly those from third parties. To validate any changes
a rigorous testing framework will be employed. This should produce a more
robust system, as well as promoting the open source nature of the project
by allowing us to rapidly incorporate additional code from the community.
The project team will contribute to the national knowledge base on coding
for the e-Framework environment and coding to the interface specifications
laid out by IMS. We will also make contributions on how easy was it
to tailor the service implementations to the institutions back-end systems.
Anticipated impact
This project will benefit the community greatly, producing a mature open
source application for online peer and self-assessment available for free,
with the potential to have an impact on all students within all
disciplines. The application will be written in PHP and use a mySQL
database making it within the technical and financial capability of many
institutions and also be optimised for a LINUX server set up. The project
intends to have the following deliverables:
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Open source web based peer assessment application (WebPA OS v2.0)
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Documented APIs and web services descriptions for integration of software
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Online documentation and supporting information
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Transferable models of good practice for embedding within curricula
across multi-disciplinary module assessments
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Evaluation report analysing areas in which the project has been
successful; identify opportunities for further development; and
highlighting the implications and challenges of implementing online peer
assessment.
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Evaluation of learner’s experiences of using online peer assessment
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Use cases describing various implications of different marking schemes
and group sizes when using online peer assessment.
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Documentation and evaluation of service definitions used and developed to
go into the e-Framework knowledge base.
Lead institution
Engineering Centre for Excellence in
Teaching & Learning (engCETL) Loughborough University
Project partners