PeerWise: A Tool Enabling Student Generated Content in Undergraduate Physics

This Pecha Kucha presentation will introduce the PeerWise tool which is an online software system that enables students to author and answer Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs) based on a particular course or module. PeerWise exploits the familiarity many students have with modern Web 2.0 software such as YouTube and Facebook where user-generated content is integral. Using the PeerWise platform, students collaborate with their peers to construct and answer MCQs which can then be evaluated leading to on-line dialogue among the students. Creative responsibility for content is assigned to the students while course instructors simply act as moderators of the Student Generated Content (SGC). The presentation will introduce the PeerWise facility and identify the most prevalent characteristics for submitting MCQs to PeerWise. In addition, preliminary results from the implementation of PeerWise in 1st and 2ndyear Physics modules at the University of Limerick (UL) will be presented. PeerWise was created by Paul Denny at the University of Auckland in New Zealand in 2007. Since its first use, more than 80,000 questions and 2 million answers have been contributed by students at over 70 institutions worldwide. PeerWise is one of several tools currently being investigated and developed by the Computer Science Education Research group at the University of Auckland.