Lessons from Peer Assessment in MOOCs

NOTE: The times listed are in EASTERN TIME.

How can our friends and networks fundamentally change the way we learn and teach? By tapping into networks of peers in online education, we can develop techniques that provide high-quality feedback for open-ended assignments such as design and writing, as well as inspire and motivate students. I will first introduce peer-assessment techniques that enable students in MOOCs to provide calibrated, open-ended feedback on each other's assignments. Next, I will present some lessons we've learned from analyzing thousands of student peer assessments. Last, I'll speak about some ongoing work to improve peer assessment to make it faster and more educational and to provide more detailed feedback to peers. These techniques and others point to a future where peers and networks are core elements of tomorrow's classroom.