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This is the first of a regular column that will share ideas from the
Web about new trends, research, connections, etc. A paper on peer feedback,
along with other good stuff on CL, can be found on Richard Felder's website:
www2.ncsu/edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/RMF.html
The reference is: Kaufman, D. B, Felder, R. M., & Fuller, H. (1999,
June). Peer ratings in cooperative teams. Paper presented at the annual
meeting of the American Society for Engineering Education, Charlotte,
North Carolina.
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 A peer rating system
developed at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology was modified
and used in two sophomore-level chemical engineering courses. The
students completed their homework in instructor-formed teams in
each course, and an average homework grade was computed for each
team. At the end of each course the students confidentially rated
how well they and each of their teammates fulfilled their team responsibilities,
taking the ratings from a prescribed list of nine terms ranging
from "excellent" to "no show." The instructor assigned numerical
values to each rating and computed a weighting factor for each student
as the student's individual average rating divided by the team average.
The student's final homework grade was the product of the weighting
factor and the team project grade. Correlations were computed between
peer ratings and test grades, peer ratings and self-ratings, ratings
given to teammates of the same sex and of the opposite sex, and
ratings given to teammates of the same ethnic background and of
different ethnic backgrounds.
Peer ratings correlated significantly with test grades, indicating
that the more responsible students tended to be those who did best
academically and/or that the academically stronger students were
perceived as contributing most to the team effort. Self-ratings
were remarkably consistent with peer ratings. Students rarely rated
themselves higher than the rest of their teammates rated them; in
fact, more (although still relatively few) gave themselves ratings
lower than any they received from teammates. The incidence of identical
ratings for all members of a team was also relatively low, on the
order of 5-10% of all teams.
No evidence of gender bias appeared in the data. Non-minority students
gave lower ratings to minority students than to other non-minority
students; racial prejudice could account in part for this result,
but other explanations are equally likely or more so. Roughly 7%
of the students were revealed as possible hitchhikers (as evidenced
by their receiving less than satisfactory peer ratings from their
teammates), but complaints about the system were almost non-existent.
Most of the concerns frequently raised about peer ratings in cooperative
learning were thus not borne out by the results of this study. Much
additional research will be needed before the concerns can be definitively
set aside.
II. Do you know about the cooperative learning mailing list? To
become a member of the free list send an e-mail message to majordomo@jaring.my
and include "subscribe CL" in the body of the message.
If you want to make a posting to this listserv, just send the message
to CL@jaring.my.
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One appealing contribution to this listserve is Ted Panitz' cooperative
learning E-book. The table of contents includes some intriguing items,
such as "Student testimonials" and "Why more teachers do not use CL."
Panitz also welcomes "comments, suggestions, and deep thoughts"
at HYPERLINK. Mail to tpanitz@cape.com.
 
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