An Anonymous Approach to Group Based Assessment Wayne Ellis & Mark Ratcliffe University of Wales, Aberystwyth

CAA Background to VorteX Award winning venture between UWA and Khaydor Ltd Part of a suite of products aimed at enhancing the underlying pedagogy Originally developed to solve many of the problems faced by today’s lecturers

CAA Why use group working? Important for personal and academic development. Encourages students’ responsibility for learning. Allows more challenging problems. Encourages positive attitude toward the subject matter. Helps build heterogeneous relationships.

CAA Problems with group working! Assessment!! –Lack of individual accountability –Carrying weaker students –Holding back stronger students

CAA VorteX VorteX is a capture tool for recording and analysing software designs. It is a collaborative development environment currently aimed at novice programmers.

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CAA Add/Edit/Removal of Classes/Methods/Attributes. Team communications. Shows individual contributions to group work. Shows possible reasoning for design changes. Tries to discover how students think! What is captured and what does it show?

CAA What does VorteX provide? A UML diagram editor, for the main part of the development. A code editor for complete support, although code is not analysed or used in research. Display of active projects, with login status of group users. A collaborative chat tool for communication and discussion (captures free text for possible analysis).

CAA Benefits of VorteX Used for 2 projects this year Less group problems than normal with most people pulling their weight Where there were problems, VorteX used to investigate. Animator can be used to investigate particular difficulties

CAA Animation Tool The animation tool allows the entire development (including chatting between students) to be replayed –Action by Action –Or as an Animation You can finally see exactly how the students develop their work

CAA Anonymous Working: The Experiment To examine the effect of anonymity on group working

CAA Anonymous Working: The Method Students given anonymous user ids VorteX teams already set up Problem given to the groups All development carried out through VorteX Questionnaire provided to gain feedback

CAA Anonymous Working: The Results Very popular exercise Only 1 group asked each other to identify themselves Comments that groups were more normalised: –Quiet students far less reticent –Less baggage brought into group – “start again”

CAA Anonymous Working: The comments “I found the experience both enjoyable and insightful. Initially I was a little apprehensive at not knowing who I was working with. What I really found interesting about the experience was that it was almost like plugging straight into my colleague’s heads, in effect bypassing or filtering out all the visual "noise" associated with day-to-day communication…. Working in this way allowed Jon [a profoundly deaf student] to interact with us on an equal footing without the usual communication problems and physical barriers enabling him to work freely and express his ideas effortlessly.”

CAA What can VorteX do for you? As A Student –Work on group projects remotely, allowing distance learning students to work on group projects –Allows students the flexibility to work when they choose –Allows less confident students to participate equally

CAA What can VorteX do for you? As A Lecturer –More information on the performance of students –Continuous monitoring of the group projects Allows fast intervention of struggling groups Can save a failing group before it is too late –Statistical analysis of the group members Faster grading of group projects More accurate reflection of individual effort –No real extra work for you….Makes it easier

CAA Available Tools Administration (Web Interface) Tool Statistics (Web Interface) Tools Snap-shot (Web Interface) Tools

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CAA Not just a programming tool VorteX is a framework –Its first implementation is a UML/Programming tool –There are several more implementations coming soon!!

CAA Conclusions VorteX has improved the teaching and assessment of group projects at UWA. VorteX has improved the feasibility of group projects. VorteX has reduced the workload for lecturers. Anonymous group working has much to offer.

CAA Message from our Sponsors - Khaydor For further information please contact Khaydor – –Web: VorteX is now available for purchase from Khaydor