Online Peer-Assessment of a Multimedia Project

Abstract

The ability to use the Internet as a convenient, informative and interactive learning resource and teaching tool is a valuable asset for English teachers. Instruction in web‐design skills is therefore becoming increasingly popular in teacher-training institutions around the world. This paper describes such a course in a university in the Republic of Korea. In this Multimedia course, student-directed collaborative learning was promoted, in order to develop in students the cognitive skills involved in teaching themselves and the social skills involved in sharing knowledge and skills with their peers. Students performed their own needs analyses, planned their learning paths, collaborated in acquiring necessary skills, and agreed on suitable criteria for the design of language-learning websites. Peer-assessment was an integral part of the overall student-centered learning process, with students providing formative feedback on each others' sites via noticeboards and submitting a final assessment to the teacher through an online form. This paper describes the process-syllabus approach of the course and reports on the method and results of the web-based peer-assessment, in addition to commenting on pedagogical implications arising from the study.