Peer Evaluation of Video Lab Reports in a Blended Introductory Physics Course

TL;DR

This study explores peer evaluation of video lab reports in a blended physics course, focusing on developing students' scientific communication skills and assessing their evaluation accuracy against experts.

Contribution

It introduces a peer-evaluation approach in a physics course and analyzes its impact on students' evaluation skills and behavior compared to expert standards.

Findings

Students improved their evaluation abilities over time.

Peer evaluations showed alignment with expert assessments.

Changes in evaluation behavior were observed after multiple assignments.

Abstract

The Georgia Tech blended introductory calculus-based mechanics course emphasizes scientific communication as one of its learning goals, and to that end, we gave our students a series of four peer-evaluation assignments intended to develop their abilities to present and evaluate scientific arguments. Within these assignments, we also assessed students' evaluation abilities by comparing their evaluations to a set of expert evaluations. We summarize our development efforts and describe the changes we observed in student evaluation behavior.