Learning objectives
Writing Skills Development
Media and Information Literacy
Critical Thinking and Research Skills
Collaboration
Wiki Technical and Communication Skills
As part of a larger project that involved both Wikipedia and other components, students were required to evaluate and improve existing Wikipedia articles about state-level political party organizations in the United States.
The students’ improvements to their assigned state-party articles were evaluated twice: a month into their work, and again at the end of the semester. The one-month evaluation involved three kinds of evaluation: Each student self-evaluated his or her own progress; each student was assigned to peer-review one other classmate’s work; and I provided an evaluation and suggestions for further improvement for each student based on his or her self-evaluations, peer-review report, and his or her article itself. The peer review component of this one-month evaluation was guided; that is, students received forms with pointed, open-ended questions to help structure their assessment of classmates’ work.
I’ve found that self-evaluation and peer-review make assessment more meaningful; they become active participants in the process rather than passive recipients of a grade. Peer review has the added benefit of facilitating students learning from each other — both in terms of the content and the quality of their work.
