CSC/ECE 517 Spring 2015 S1524 FSZZ

E1524. Refactor staggered-deadline assignments

Overview

Introduction to Expertiza

Expertiza is a web application where students can submit and peer-review learning objects (articles, code, web sites, etc). It is used in select courses at NC State and by professors at several other colleges and universities.

Staggered Deadlines

Staggered deadlines involve planning alternate submission dates for papers, projects, or exams when a student has conflicting due dates for these. The key part of staggered deadlines is the planning. Staggered deadlines are always established well in advance of the scheduled due date. It is the advanced planning of these deadlines that makes them "staggered deadlines" rather than extensions<ref>Elmichaels. Difficulties with Staggered Deadlines. Jan 15, 2013</ref>.

Problem Statement

Background

In this semester’s 517 class. Wiki 1a and Wiki 1b are structured as separate assignments, with separate signup sheets, teams, and reviews. But really, since only one of the two was done by any student, it would’ve been better to have a single assignment. Still, some topics could be done soon after the course started, whereas others were better done after we had studied related topics in class.

Staggered-deadline Assignment

This raises the idea of a staggered-deadline assignment, where different topics have different submission and review deadlines, rather than all topics having the same deadline.

Benefit

• Easy to manage. Because in the past, instructor has to build two separate assignments for Wiki 1a and 1b, now one assignment for Wiki is enough.

• Increase flexibility. For instance, when an OSS team facing a much more difficult problem than other teams, instructor may postpone their deadline several days. It will make Expertiza more humanize.

• Take time to do calibration. We find that two Wiki assignments started at Jan. 28th and ended at Feb. 25th, which takes too much time. And with staggered-deadline assignment, we can distribute less time on them. And we can take redundant time to do calibrating. Because we find that many students actually do not know how to evaluate other ones’ work, even there are some rubrics offered. So we recommend to let students grade sample assignments first, then calibrate their grading behaviors. Although it will take some time, we consider it is important to help students distinguish good assignments from common ones.

References

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