Peer Feedback and Gamification

Problem

The ability to give and receive feedback is an essential skill for students studying computer science. However, the research suggests that students are often reticent about giving each other peer feedback on their work. There are many reasons why this may be so (literature support). (I personally believe it is because they are not taught about its pedagogical value or how to do it).

At the same time, research suggests that gamification increases student engagement and motivation especially in a computer science context (do you have lit on this?).

Research Question

How does gamification affect computer science students’ motivation and quality of feedback during peer assessment?

Questions:

How will you measure the quality of feedback students give?
How will you measure their degree of motivation during the peer feedback exercise?

Subjects

Ensure that you have two groups of students who can participate in the exercise at the same time. Ideally, they would not be your students.

You would have to show statistically, that the groups are equal in background knowledge and ability. This can be done easily as long as you can get access to their grades from a previous course, or their high school incoming average (this data may be difficult to get your hands on, the analysis is easy if you have the data, T-Test or Anova).

Alternatively, you might be able to use the same students at two different times throughout the semester. First data collection in Week 6; second in week 10. You would have to make a defensible argument why you chose to do it with gamification on the first or second exercise regardless of how you organize this.

Procedure

Peer Feedback Exercise

Create (map out the steps) of the peer feedback exercise.

Instructions

Criteria and standards of performance need to be clear and exist in the form of a rubric that students can use to provide the feedback.
Teach the procedure to both groups explaining and stressing its value
Come up with a way to document the feedback given and received in each group.

Gamification

Create the gamification component that gets added to the exact peer feedback exercise used above and integrated into the peer feedback exercise of Group B.
You would have so show that it had all the components of the peer feedback exercise done by both groups with the added gamification element.

Measurements

Figure out how you will measure the quality of students’ feedback.
Find or create an instrument that measures student motivation in relation to performing a specific learning activity (peer feedback exercise)

Analysis

Group A is compared to Group B on the quality of their feedback (T-Test or Anova)
Group A is compared to Group B on the degree of motivation exhibited during the peer feedback exercise. (T-Test or Anova)

Articles about Gamification

TABLE title as "Title"
FROM "20 Literature Notes"
	AND #gamification
	AND !(#peer-feedback OR #peer-assessment OR #peer-review OR #computer-science OR #motivation)

Articles about Peer Feedback

TABLE title as "Title"
FROM "20 Literature Notes"
	AND (#peer-feedback OR #peer-assessment OR #peer-review)
	AND !(#gamification OR #computer-science OR #motivation)

Articles about Motivation

TABLE title as "Title"
FROM "20 Literature Notes"
	AND #motivation

Articles about Gamification and Computer Science

TABLE title as "Title"
FROM "20 Literature Notes"
	AND #gamification
	AND #computer-science

Articles about Peer Feedback and Computer Science

TABLE title as "Title"
FROM "20 Literature Notes"
	AND (#peer-feedback OR #peer-assessment OR #peer-review)
	AND #computer-science

Table of Contents

Vikram Singh