First Pass Coding of ROLE Peer Evaluation Essays
The purpose of these peer evaluation essays was to get a measure of whether students would evaluate another student’s essay in terms of the reliability or plausibility of the information that was included. From examining our first set of examples, we found VERY little explicit critique about the content of the essay. Here are the categories of responses we found:
1 = acceptance of oil theory
examples: “I think that this essay is pretty good. The student is right about too much oil being drilled. The student is also right about the tremors before the earthquakes. Overall this essay was accurate.”
“This essay is a good summary of why volcanoes erupt. It starts out by explaining where the volcano is located and gets into the theory of scientists. I evaluate this essay an A because it talks about the important things found in the research study. It explains the magma, the scale, the oil, and the collision of heat and gas to the air. These are all the explanations to why volcanoes erupt.”
2 = no specific mention of oil or vague acceptance of oil theory
examples: “I’ll give this student an A because he or she has all of the info summarized very well.”
“This is a very well written essay. This person thoroughly understood what he/she researched b/c this info was what was in the articles that were read. Everything said here sounds factual + makes sense. He/she covered all points in the articles.”
3= vague rejection (dissatisfaction) of oil theory
example: “His first reason is good. I used that too. The second reason is okay, but I wouldn’t use it because it’s not really important. The third reason, I think, makes no sense at all.”
4 = explicit rejection of oil theory
“I think that most of the student’s essay was correct, other than the part about oil contributing to volcanic eruptions. Before he/she stated this, the rest of the information I had read on the websites and it seems factual. The last idea, however, seems to only be a theory.”
We are suggesting this as a starting point for a coding scheme on these essays, and adding this as a variable called PEER to the database. Coders should make note of any other potentially interesting attributes of the essays, especially anything that looks like critical evaluation of the peer essay, for later discussion.