This situation is probably familiar to many lecturers. The important learning, that comes from actively learning from your own mistakes and those of others, never materialises. Professor Lars Henrik Gam Madsen at the Department of Law knows this all too well.

Much of the problem can be attributed to the fact that students do not spend (enough) time working with their assignments after they are returned to them, but just make do with looking at their marks and reading the comments. In other words, they usually use the feedback passively: “What have I done wrong”, instead of actively looking at what they could have done differently and how, says Lars Henrik Gam Madsen.

Feedback, feedback, feedback

Therefore, Lars Henrik Gam Madsen launched a so-called peer assessment experiment in Blackboard with 180 of his Property Law students. This is a very comprehensive subject, and the hardest one of all on the law programme, according to the students. And it is because the subject is so difficult that it demands so much – during lectures, when doing assignments and, not least, after the assignments. The desire to work with peer feedback arose as long ago as 2011, but the right tools for handling 300 students or so were not available until Lars Henrik discovered the possibilities offered by Blackboard in connection with GoOnline*.

The peer assessment model strengthens the process after assignments are returned to the students. The model comprises three phases:

1. First the student completes his or her assignment and uploads it to the website.
2. Then each student is asked to provide feedback on assignments from three fellow students. The student is thereby introduced to several possible ways of tackling the assignment while also having to actively consider what is the right solution.
3. Finally, the student receives feedback on his or her own assignment from three fellow students.

The assignments have helped the students define their cases better, sort through the available information, find the relevant rules and apply them. It has given them a chance to see with their own eyes what a lecturer and an examiner are looking for when marking an assignment, says Lars Henrik Gam Madsen.

Students: Learn a lot from giving feedback

After the experiment, the students are overwhelmingly positive. They generally feel that they have benefited a lot from providing feedback, seeing the other students’ assignments, being given the chance to do more exercises, and receiving feedback.

The students are surprised at how long it takes to give feedback, and several of them say that they still prefer to receive feedback from an ‘authorised source’ such as their lecturer, as they are concerned that their fellow students are unable to provide the same quality of feedback.

Learning success with technical reservations

Lars Henrik Gam Madsen on the other hand is convinced that the students have learned much more from the assignments than normal, and the experiment is therefore continuing at the Department of Law. However, Lars Henrik Gam Madsen has some reservations about the technology and the time it takes.

“The procedure is very time-consuming. Preparing marking instructions for the students takes a lot of time, for example, and I also receive a lot of questions from the students along the way. But perhaps it is just because it is the first time that the students are using the model.”

Lars Henrik Gam Madsen has been named Lecturer of the Year at BSS in 2013.

Further information Lars Henrik Gam Madsen Professor, Department of Law Aarhus University, School of Business and Social Sciences lhgm@jura.au.dk

*Read more about Go Online here