Eager ‘weavers’: Designing assessment for an online environment

As more and more Australian universities move their courses into blended learning environments (BLEs), it is important that strategies be devised to monitor teaching practices and student learning. In 2008, five large Australian universities were given an ALTC (Australian Learning and Teaching Council) grant to address the area of teacher peer review (PR). This paper shows evidence from one of the universities (The University of Technology, Sydney) where a case study was undertaken to optimise teacher peer review in a BLE. The project involved an innovative approach of interdisciplinary PR between an academic from the Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery and Health and an academic from the Faculty of Arts and Social Science (FASS). As a result of this collaboration, the online assessment in the nursing subject was radically changed with a greater percentage of the marks awarded to online activities. The design took more ‘up front’ effort by the coordinator, as is usually the case in online preparation, but results have shown that students who had previously relied heavily on directions from their tutors throughout the semester, were now taking on more responsibility for their own learning and for the learning of fellow students.