Abstract:

Fundamentals of Genetic Engineering and Genomics (FGEG) and Biophysics and Bioinformatics (BB) are two undergraduate subjects at Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) that, although quite different in contents, pose similar difficulties for students. Both introduce quite novel materials and approaches in their respective degrees (Biology and Biochemistry) and both are rather practical in nature. To encourage students to self-assess their progress and to practice, we recently introduced H5P exercises as part of the FGEG evaluation, in the context of an on-line game. We found that integrating interactive exercises in the game, rather than presenting them separately, motivates students to participate in team activities, while also contributing individually to the common effort. Hence, they provide an exceptional tool to probe the benefits of self-assessment and also of peer review. At the same time, we recruited a couple of students to help us in programming tasks during the development of the game. Both are now in their last year of the Biochemistry degree, which places them in an excellent position to review the work of their peers in an introductory Python course.

In order to promote critical thinking, this year we have asked BB students to self-assess their Python exercises, following the same rubric as the teachers. They were also given the opportunity to mark some of their colleagues' work. Our goal was to allow them to compare different approaches to the same problem and to help them improve their own performance. In addition, each exercise was marked by two teachers, and two broad groups of students were formed. One served as a control, whereas in the other, the two previously-trained students evaluated their peers. The final mark of each exercise was a weighted average in which discrepancies between teachers and agreement with the rubric were counted positively. About half of the students participated in the experience. A similar approach was followed in FGEG. Here we report on the progress that we observed on the problem-solving abilities of our students. We also discuss the similarities of and differences between the two subjects. Finally, we comment on technical aspects of the implementation of self-assessment and peer-review, such as randomization and anonymization of evaluation assignments, as well as on the on-line means we used to make exercises available for student reviewers, both on the UCM virtual campus and the game platform for FGEG.

Keywords:

Self-learning, peer review, open-source tools, gamification, pre-training.