On Sunday, June 17, 2012, Trevor Holster, Bill Pellowe and J. Lake will give a presentation during the Pan-SIG 2012 Conference at Hiroshima University (Higashi Hiroshima campus) in Higashi Hiroshima, Hiroshima Prefecture. The presentation includes a demonstration of the Peer Assessment add-on for MOARS. MOARS is a free, open-source Mobile Audience Response System for students to use with iPod Touch, iPhones, and other mobile browsers.

Our presentation time is scheduled for Sunday from 11:45 to 12:15. Here's the title and abstract:

Learning by Assessing in an EFL Writing Class

Trevor A. Holster (Fukuoka Women's University), Bill Pellowe (Kinki University) and J. Lake (Fukuoka Women's University)

This study used many-faceted Rasch measurement to research peer assessment in an EFL writing class. Pre- and post-treatment writing was compared on a rubric targeting specific instructional items and a rubric assessing general academic writing. Students used the instructional rubric to conduct peer assessment, but were not exposed to the secondary rubric. Substantive gains were observed on the instructional rubric but not on the secondary rubric, providing evidence of learning by assessing. Response patterns suggested holistic rating by peer raters, supporting the view that the mechanism of learning was learning by assessing rather than formative feedback.

Performance assessment using peer-assessed tasks such as presentations or essay writing can improve engagement and provide learning opportunities for performers and raters through "learning-by-teaching." However, data collection and analysis limit the practicality for classroom teachers. The presenters demonstrate an open-source audience response system designed for classroom use that can output data files for many-faceted Rasch analysis, allowing detailed analysis of students as both performers and raters. This presentation is aimed at classroom teachers, assumes no previous experience with the software demonstrated, and will be especially useful to those who want to do peer feedback research.