Here’s a summary of the blog posting and scoring as I’ve developed it so far. Feel free to make a comment or ask a question on this post. Comments posted here will not be graded.
You should post at least one comment per week starting with the Week 2 entry, which I will post after this one. You are probably wondering how long a comment should be, and how many comments you should make. The main thing I want to say is that I am looking for quality more than quantity. If you have read Slashdot, you know that a short comment can get a high score and be considered very insightful, and conversely a long one can be rather undistinguished. Try to make your comments no longer or shorter than they need to be – that’s part of the art of good commenting. Regarding the number of comments you make – the same principle applies. Scoring will only happen after a few weeks of postings and is holistic over that set, so you will not get scores for individual comments that would add together.
Over time, it should become clearer what the norms are regarding all this, but I don’t want to impose anything from the start. Blog comments are worth 45% of your total grade (the presentation/discussion leading is 40%, and general attendance and participation is 15%). At three points in the quarter: following weeks 2-3 (10 points), 4-7 (20 points), and 8-10 (15 points), I will solicit from each person the following scores (out of the points available during that period), to be sent to me by email:
- a score for your own comments (Sk, assuming you are student
k)
- a score for each of the other students in the class (Pki for
each student i)
Before reading your self/peer scores, I will assign my own score (Ti) to each student’s comments. I will not share any information about your scoring with anyone else in the class – only I will know how you scored yourselves and each other. Assuming you are student k and there are n students (indexed by i) in the class, your total score for the period being scored will be:
(1/3) Tk
+
(1/3) {Sk / [1 + ln(1+ |Sk - Tk|)]}
+
(1/3) [∑i≠k Pik / (n-1)] / {1 + ln[1 +∑i≠k |Ti - Pki| / (n-1)]}
This formula combines my score for you with your own self-evaluation and your peers’ evaluations of you weighted by a meta-evaluation (how well your scores agree with mine). This is an incentivizing system, but it makes it very hard to get a perfect score. As you will see, though, that is okay once you understand that scores are bound to appear lower than they otherwise would be. Don’t worry – it won’t mean that everyone will get a low grade at the end. The main things to understand are that (a) your total score will depend on what you, I, and your peers each think, and (b) your total score will benefit a lot if you assign scores to yourself and others that you think will be close to the ones I will assign. It should work okay if I assign scores that people think are fair. The formula above is friendlier than the one I initially came up with, and I think it will be easier for everyone to deal with. We’ll have a few iterations to test it out.
It may seem like I am weighting my own opinion excessively (by defining my own scores to be the standard for comparison with self/peer scores), but remember that if I were grading in the usual way, your own and your fellow students’ evaluations of you wouldn’t count at all. This system is designed to get everyone thinking seriously about the value of their own and others’ contributions. And I will certainly welcome your feedback on the scoring system as we proceed, especially at the end of the course when we have had a real chance to see how it works.
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