Dear TBLers
I am involved with a group working ‘sub group’ at my University. We are looking for a group work policy to be applied across an undergraduate engineering syllabus. Some of this is delivered TBL style, but mostly not. There is lots of good practice however.
One particular challenge we are grappling with is students with DAPS – disability access plans. These are, naturally, private to the student and so a student’s peers will not know they have a DAP. There is a general perception (indeed, apparently backed by evidence) that students with DAPS are discriminated against in peer evaluations – perhaps not intentionally, but nevertheless the impact is apparently real.
As a result, the proposed policy is that peer-weighting is simply not implemented for students with DAPS (whether they get formative and hopefully constructive feedback is still an area under consideration).
I feel certain that this issue has been looked at in the TBL community and that many on this list will have strong views. I haven’t found a lot in my (admittedly brief) look at the literature, but any opinions welcome, I know my colleagues will value any evidence in this space (eg journal papers, book chapters etc).
Before you ask, I think a wholesale adoption of TBL in its entirety is not, for the moment, on the cards! That said, anything that shows that TBL helps combat bias in peer evaluation specifically would be super useful.
Thanks everyone
Steve