Workshop settings

Adding a new workshop

1. With the editing turned on, in the section you wish to add your workshop, click the "Add an activity or resource" link (or, if not present, the "Add an activity" drop down menu )and choose Workshop. All settings may expanded by clicking the "Expand all" link top right.

General

1. The "Adding a new workshop" screen will be displayed

General settings expanded by default

Name

Whatever you type here will form the link learners click on to view the workshop, so it is helpful to give it a name that suggests its purpose.

Description

Add a description of your workshop here. Give an overview of what happens and when, and what students need to know or do to succeed.

To display the rich text editor, click "Show editing tools" and drag the handle bottom right of the editor to expand it.

Display description on the course page

If this box is ticked, the description will appear on the course page just below the name of the workshop.

Grading settings

(These settings are collapsed by default)

Grading settings expanded

Grading Strategy

What you choose here determines the assessment form students will use and also the strategy for grading submissions. For more detailed descriptions see Grading Strategies. Note: Grading strategies can't be changed once we have entered the submission phase of a workshop

• Accumulative grading: Comments and a grade are given regarding the aspects of the workshop specified.

• Comments: Comments are given but no grade can be given to the specified aspects

• Number of Errors: A yes/no assessment is used and comments are given for specified assertions

• Rubric: A level assessment is given regarding specified criteria

Grade for Submission

This sets the maximum grade a student can attain from a teacher for a given submission. It is scaled between 0-100. If you have set up any Grade Categories, you will see a picklist.

Grade for Assessment

Sets the maximum grade a student can receive for assessing other students’ work. It is also scaled between 0-100. If you have set up any Grade Categories, you will see a picklist.

Decimal places in grade

Decide here how many decimal places are allowed in the grade.

Submission settings

(These settings are collapsed by default)

Submission settings expanded

Instructions for submission

Students see this when they click on the link to the Workshop. Explain here what they need to do to make a successful submission (it may also help to refer them back to general instructions for using the Workshop - how to find out when the deadlines are and what they do at each stage).

Maximum number of submission attachments

If you wish students to attach files, select how many here, up to a maximum of 7. If you leave it at 0 then they can only enter text.

If you allow files, then note that some students may choose to enter text - so you may need to stipulate whether students should upload files or enter text. If either, then in the Instructions for Review, flag up to students that there may be some variation in how they access the submissions.

Maximum File Size

Decide here how large a file students can upload. The size will depend on the course upload limit.

Late Submissions

Ticking this box will allow students to submit after the deadline. Please note that if late submissions are allowed, there is no way to automatically allocate assessors to them. A Teacher will need to manually allocate assessors to these late submissions.

(Allocation settings are explained below - they will be made after these workshop settings have been saved by clicking the “Allocate Submissions” link highlighted with a red box in the picture of the dashboard. See the section Submission phase.)

Submission settings for allocating reviewers to submissions

Assessment settings

(These settings are collapsed by default.)

Assessment settings expanded

Instructions for assessment

Students see these instructions when the Workshop is in Assessment Phase. They are important to students' understanding of the task before assessing their classmates’ submissions.

After these workshop settings have been saved, Teachers can access further settings related to allocating assessments. See the section Set up phase.

Use self-assessment

Checking this box means that students may be allocated their own work to assess. This will depend on Moodle's allocation i.e. the larger the group of students the less likely it is that anyone will be allocated their own work.

Feedback

(These settings are collapsed by default.)

Feedback settings expanded

Overall feedback mode

If this is enabled, a text box appears at the bottom of each assessment form for reviewers to give an overall comment about the submission. Depending on whether is it set to "Enabled and optional" or "Enabled and required", reviewers will either have the choice of leaving overall feedback or they will be forced to do so.

Maximum number of overall feedback attachments

Choose here how many (if any) files you wish reviewers to attach to their overall feedback, up to a maximum of 7.

Maximum overall feedback attachment size

Decide here how large a feedback file students can upload. The size will depend on the course upload limit.

Conclusion

It is possible to add some text which the students will see once they reach the end of the workshop process. It is a good idea to signpost students to how they can access the assessments they have received.

It might also include suggestions on what students should do next.

Example submissions

(These settings are collapsed by default.)

Example submissions settings expanded

There are three options in this drop down menu: The first option means that the assessment of the example submission is voluntary, while the second and the third ones make it mandatory, which either requires students to assess example submissions before submitting their own work or after their own submission but before peer-assessment.

Note: Assessments of the example submission are not counted when calculating the grade for assessment.

Availability

(These settings are collapsed by default.)

Availability settings expanded

This section deals with setting submission times and assessment times for the workshop. That is the time when students can start submitting as well as the deadline for submitting, and similarly the time assessments for other students’ work start and when they must finish assessing other students work.

All dates - open for submissions from, submissions deadline, open for assessment from and assessment deadline - are displayed in the course calendar.

Availability lets teacher decide if they want a workshop with a closed schedule or one that is open ended. Setting an opening time but leaving the deadline open makes it an ongoing activity. To set the opening time and deadline for either submissions or assessments teachers must click the enable button next to the option they want to set. Once the enabled has been checked the 5 drop down boxes will be activated and available for change.

The first three boxes correspond to the date and we can either set this box by box or by selecting the date in the calendar that pops up when any of the date boxes are selected. The last two boxes correspond to the time in 24 hour time, the first of the two being hours and the second being minutes. Teachers simply set the desired time for each of the sections they wish to activate.

If teachers check the box "switch to the next phase after the submissions deadline", the workshop will automatically switch to the assessment phase after the next cron job. (Note that since MDL-37781, the phase switching no longer requires cron to be executed. This will apply to your Moodle if it is the latest weekly after February 8th, or if it is Moodle 2.4.2 onwards.)

Common module settings

See Common module settings

Restrict access/Activity completion

(These settings are collapsed by default)

These settings are visible if Conditional activities and Activity completion have been enabled in the site and the course.

Set up phase

In order to set the criteria for an assignment, teachers need to fill out an assessment form during the setup phase. Students can view this assessment form in the submission phase and focus on what is important about the task when working on their assignment. In the next phase-the assessment phase, students will assess their peers’ work based on this assessment form.

According to the grading strategy chosen in the grading settings, teachers will get corresponding original assessment form to edit by clicking ‘Edit assessment form’ button in the first page of the workshop setup for the assignment. The grading strategy can be one of Accumulative grading, Comments, Number of errors or Rubrics. Teachers can set each criterion in detail in the assessment form.

Submission phase

Once the workshop has been made we can then set more settings relating to submissions. This is done through clicking on the menu highlighted below which is found when you click on the workshop’s link or after clicking “Save and Display” on completion of the workshop. To access the menu simply click on “Allocate Submissions”. It is highlighted in the picture by the red box.

Submission settings for allocating reviewers to submissions

Manual Allocation Menu

Random Allocation Menu

Manual Allocation

Here,a teacher can manually choose which students review whose work. A student can review work even if they have not submitted anything themselves.

Random Allocation

The teacher is given 5 settings that determine how the random allocation will work.

• Number of reviews: Here the teacher picks between 0 and 30 reviews for either each submission or per reviewer. That is the teacher may choose to either set the number of reviews each submission must have or the number of reviews each student has to carry out
• Prevent Reviews: If the teacher wishes for students of the same group to never review each other’s work, as most likely it is their work too in a group submission, then they can check this box and moodle will ensure that they are only allocated other students out of their group’s work to access
• Remove current allocations: Checking this box means that any manual allocations that have been set in the Manual Allocation menu will be removed
• Can access with no submission: Having this box checked allows students to assess other students’ work without having already submitted their own work.
• Add self assessments: This options when checked make sure that as well as assessing other students’ work they must also assess their own. This is a good option to teach students how to be objective to their own work.

Assessment phase

• Examples:
  

Students can assess example submissions for practice before assessing their peers' work if this feature is enabled. They can compare their assessments with reference assessments made by the teacher. The grade will not be counted in the grade for assessment.

Teachers need to upload one or more example submissions and the corresponding reference assessment to support this function.

Teachers can also edit the reference assessment later by clicking the ‘re-assess’ button in the first page.

• Peer assessment:
  

If this feature is enabled, a student will be allocated a certain amount of submissions from his peers to assess. He will receive a grade for each assessment, which will be added together with the grade for his own submission and this will be used as his final grade for this assignment.

This is the key feature of workshop: To encourage students to assess the work of their peers and learn from each other. Through this, they will see the strengths of their classmates’ submissions and have a better understanding about how to do a good job. In addition, the advices they get from their peers will give them a more comprehensive view of their own work: The comments from their peers will point out the weakness of their work, which is generally difficult to find out by themselves.

• Self-assessment:
  

If this option is turned on, a student may be allocated his own work to assess. The grade he receives from assessment of his own work will be counted into the grade for assessment, which will be added together with the grade for submission and used to calculate his final grade for this assignment.

This setting enables teachers to see whether students can find out the strength and weakness of their own submissions and judge them objectively. It is a good way to help students think more comprehensively.

Grading evaluation phase

Grading evaluation settings

Grading evaluation settings

Here you can choose your settings for calculation of the grade for assessments.

Grade calculation method

This setting determines how to calculate grade for assessments. Currently there is only one option- comparison with the best assessment.

The Comparison with the best assessment tries to imagine what a hypothetical absolutely fair assessment would look like.

For example, a teacher uses Number of errors as grading strategy to peer-assess one assignment. This strategy uses a couple of assertions and assessors just need to check if the given assertion is passed or failed. That is, they only need to choose ‘yes’ or ‘no’ for each criterion in the assessment form. In this case, there are three assessors, Alice, Bob and Cindy. And the assessment form contains three criteria. The author will get 100% grade if all the criteria are passed, 75% if two criteria are passed, 25% if only one criterion is passed and 0% if the assessor gives ‘no’ for all three assertions. Here are the assessments they give to one certain work:

Alice: yes/yes/no
Bob: yes/yes/no
Cindy: no/yes/yes

Then the best assessment will be:
Yes/yes/no

Second, the workshop will give the best assessment 100% grade. Next it will measure the ‘distance’ from other assessments to this best assessment. The farther the distance, the lower grade the assessment will receive. And Comparison of assessments setting, next to the Grade evaluation setting, will determine how quickly the grade falls down if the assessment differs from the best one.

Note: Comparison with the best assessment method will compare responses to each individual criterion instead of comparing the final grades. In the example above, all of the three assessors give 75% to the submission. However, only Alice and Bob will get 100% grade for their assessments, while Cindy will get a lower grade. Because Alice and Bob agree in individual responses too, while the responses in Cindy’s assessment are different.

• Comparison of assessments:

This setting has 5 options: very lax, lax, fair, strict and very strict. It specifies how strict the comparison of assessment should be. By using comparison with the best assessment method, all assessments will be compared with the best assessment picked up by workshop. The more similar one assessment is with the best assessment, the higher grade this assessment will get, and vice versa. This setting determines how quickly the grades fall down when the assessments differ from the best assessment.

Workshop toolbox

Workshop toolbox

Clear all aggregated grades

Clicking this button will reset aggregated grades for submission and grades for assessment. Teachers can re-calculate these grades from scratch in Grade evaluation phase.

Clear assessments

By clicking this button, grades for assessments along with grades for submission will be reset. The assessment form will remain the same but all the reviewers need to open the assessment form again and re-save it to get the given grades calculated again.

Site administration settings

The workshop module has additional settings which may be changed by an administrator in Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Activity modules > Workshop. The settings enable default values to be set for all edit workshop settings.

See also

• http://rubistar.4teachers.org/ - a free tool to help teachers create rubrics