Co-ordinator: Nicola Wilkinson, Loughborough University
Engineering Subject Centre Contact: Carol Arlett

Supported and funded by the Engineering Subject Centre, the WebPA SIG aims to support and facilitate both discussion and sharing of best practice for the peer moderation of group work.

The key outcomes of the WebPA SIG will be to:
• Build a self-sustaining community for WebPA which brings together those interested in peer moderated marking and supports both existing and new users.
• Maintain the reputation and quality of WebPA through active continuation.

I am trialling the software, but my colleagues wondered whether we could have the ability for text in addition to the students' scores being saved? This seems more satisfactory for the audit trail in terms of evidence to support a numerical score. Has anyone incoporated this or know whether the software (i.e. the database) can be edited to provide this facility?

Many thanks

Neil Ferguson

PS I might be able to get some assistance at my university to incorporate this update, if it is straightforward.

The final report is one of the last work packages that the project needed to complete. Attached you will find the final report as sent to JISC (the funding body).

START TIME: 10:00 am
LOCATION/VENUE: Manchester Conference Centre, Manchester, UK

This event, jointly organised with the Engineering Subject Centre and the WebPA Project, will introduce participants to the benefits of peer assessment from a key researcher in this field and hear about how the WebPA project offers a technological solution for supporting peer assessment.

WebPA held the first user group meeting on the 16th December 2008 at the Business School, Aston, Birmingham.

The event was attended by a range of people from 12 Higher Education Institutions and a number of other organisations. The attendees were a mix of Academic Tutors, Learning Technologist and IT support/ WebPA installers.

The programme for event was as following:

A patch, or diff, is a record of changes made to a resource. Typically a patch will add a new feature, fix a bug, or add documentation to the project.

Patches are the preferred way to submit contributions to open development projects such as open source software. Various tools are available to help with patches. These tools make it very easy to create and manage patches for project outputs such as source code and documentation. Patches and patch management tools are part of building an active community of contributors to the open development project WebPA.

Our project partner, the Physical Sciences Subject Centre are holding an event looking at the following; 'New technology is being developed on a regular basis and much of this quickly finds application in education. However, it is sometimes difficult to find the time to make the most of existing technology let alone, new technology.'

This workshop will provide participants with examples of how to use both existing and new technologies more effectively in higher education, which of course is featuring the WebPA Tool.

DATE: 11 Jun 2008
START TIME: 10:00 am

Nicola Wilkinson from the WebPA team will be presenting at the next meeting of the JISC CETIS Assessment SIG will be a joint meeting with the Enterprise and Portfolio SIGs and will be held on Thursday 22 May 2008 at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow.

The JISC CETIS presentations are available on line, at http://wiki.cetis.ac.uk/Assessment-Enterprise-Portfolio_meeting_2008

On 14 May 2008 the WebPA project was presented with a Bronze 'Learning Impact' Award at the IMS Annual Conference and Summit on Global Learning Industry Challenges in Austin, Texas. The Awards recognise the use of technology to improve learning and WebPA was the only UK project among the twenty-three shortlisted finalists. Nicola Wilkinson and Peter Willmot from the WebPA team were there in person to present WebPA to the expert panel of judges and collect the award.

A worksheet which accompanies the project demonstrator is available for anyone to use. It is a step-by-step guide which accompanies the WebPA demonstrator system (http://webpaos.lboro.ac.uk) and goes through the following from a tutor/academic perspective;

- Creating a form
- Forming groups
- Creating, running and managing assessments
- the automated results section.

From the student perspective, it gives the instructions to completing an assessment and demonstrates what a student would see when an assessment is open.

This review focuses on peer assessment of group work and will be of use to those with an interest peer assessment of group work and the WebPA project team who are carrying out work associated with many of the areas in this review. Numerous recommendations are made for the peer assessment community and the WebPA project. The review comes with a references table (see appendix 2 or the separate document) which highlights over 30 references with key themes and findings for each.

This review aims to;

Today, the WebPA team have received some really good news from Dr Bob Cherry at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU). WebPA has been piloted there with one of Bob's modules. From this pilot Bob has been able to report that...

"WebPA is now embedded in our first year and will be for the next five years. Typically 180-200 students will be subjected to.. [WebPA] ..every year." (Dr Bob Cherry, MMU)

Carol Robinson will be presenting 'Assessment of mathematics group work' the Maths, Stats and OR Network event 'Assessment & Plagiarism in Undergraduate Mathematics' on Friday 9 May 2008 at The Open University, Milton Keynes.

The e-Assessment Association in collaboration with the Council for the Curriculum Examinations and Assessment (CCEA) in Northern Ireland, ABC Awards in Nottingham and the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) in Scotland is to hold a series of seminars around the UK. More information can be found on their website http://www.seminars.e-assess.co.uk/

Back in December Nicola submitted an application to take part in the awards supported by the JISC Cetis. This has lead to the project being listed as one of the 25 finalists. The IMS press release is available on line at: http://www.imsglobal.org/pressreleases/pr080207.html

Following this other people have picked up on this and have either made press releases, or have blogged about it;

• JISC project shortlisted for international award
• WebPA: making an impact, Rowin's Blog