Ask | Share | Learn

Welcome

PeerWise supports the construction, display and organisation of student contributed assessment questions.

Students of a participating course develop multiple-choice questions with associated explanations and contribute them to PeerWise. These questions are then available to other students in the course and can be answered for revision purposes, critiqued and discussed, and rated for difficulty and quality.

Developing effective multiple-choice questions requires that the associated concepts are thoroughly understood and provides a good opportunity to reinforce material that has been recently learned.

The collection of questions and responses provides timely feedback to instructors on how students are performing and how various course topics are perceived, and becomes a valuable revision resource for students. The process of answering, assessing and discussing questions developed by their peers enables students to compare their performance and understanding with that of other students studying the same material.

Ask...  When contributing a new question, state the question as clearly and unambiguously as possible and include all necessary information. Provide up to five plausible alternatives - exactly one of which must be correct. In addition, include a clear explanation of the correct answer to assist anyone answering the question incorrectly to understand their mistake.

Share...  All contributed questions are available to everyone in the course. The questions can be selected based on their rating, the number of responses they have received, their difficulty, or simply when they were created. Contributors of good questions can be subscribed to, or followed, by other students - providing instant access to all of their contributions.

Learn...  When a question is answered, immediate feedback on the selected alternative is displayed. All previous responses to the question are also revealed, offering insight into the understanding of other students in the course. An opportunity is provided to rate the question and to discuss it - from stating how useful it was to offering possible improvements.

February 2010

PeerWise is currently being used in the following institutions:

• The University of Auckland, New Zealand
• The University of California, San Diego
• The University of British Columbia, Vancouver
• Duke University, North Carolina
• The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
• Curtin University of Technology, Perth
• University of Helsinki, Finland
• The University of Melbourne
• TAG Magnet High School, Texas
• School of Science and Engineering Magnet
• Fort Lewis College, Durango
• Geelong High School, Victoria, Australia
• Michigan Tech
• Mount Royal University, Calgary
• University of Glasgow, Scotland
• BCIT, Vancouver
• Helsinki University of Technology
• Carnegie Mellon Qatar
• Glasgow Caledonian University, Scotland
• Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
• Swinburne University of Technlolgy, Melbourne
• University of the Fraser Valley, British Columbia
• The University of Southern Queensland, Australia
• Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand
• Lincoln University, New Zealand
• University of Edinburgh, Scotland
• Mesa Community College, San Diego
• Ako Dunedin Workshop

Contact

PeerWise is freely available - if you would like to find out more, or if you are interested in using it with your course, please contact peerwise@cs.auckland.ac.nz.

If you would like to learn more, there is some brief documentation for both instructors and students.