From PeerWise to a Self-Check
Since the Fall of 2019, I have been having students use PeerWise for their reading quizzes. They had a two-part assignment to complete at PeerWise for each chapter they read. First, they created original multiple-choice questions based on the chapter’s content, and then they answered questions that had been developed by classmates.
The second part was just good old-fashioned low-stakes retrieval practice; they were graded on completion not on accuracy. It was the first part that I found the greatest educational benefit in. Actually writing multiple-choice questions that their classmates would respond to and rate, and authoring the explanations for the correct responses, was where the real learning reinforcement occurred. There was an added element of a leaderboard which ranked students by the number of questions authored, answered, accuracy when answering, and peer-rated quality of original questions, which motivated some students to do more than required.
Unfortunately, with generative AI, the best part of the assignment – students struggling to translate material they read in the textbook into a quiz question – is gone now. Students can simply have generative AI crank-out questions, and submit them as their own.
So, for next semester, I will no longer be using PeerWise, and instead will have a two-part assignment/ assessment for each chapter.
After students read the assigned chapter, first, they will complete a “Chapter X self-check.” That will consist of five multiple-choice questions pulled from a bank, relating strictly to the content in the chapter. This will look like a quiz but it will not be in a secure testing environment (eg, Lockdown Browser for Canvas, which is what we use). Students will be able to retake the quiz as many times as they like until they get a score they’re satisfied with. These are done outside of the classroom and class time.
The second part of the new assignment will be an in-class quick-write, in “Lockdown browser” so that students cannot access generative AI. This quick-write will have three short questions (which I’d written years ago as an at-home writing assignment based on the book Make It Stick). These are timed to 15-minutes, which I really hate to give-up from my 200-minutes a week with students — but with generative AI, I can’t think of a more efficient way of keeping them on their reading schedule