--- /dev/null
+<p align="center"><b>Comparison of Assessments</b></p>
+
+<p>In a workshop it is common for the same piece of work to be assessed by the
+ teacher and the students. If examples are used then the teacher first
+ assesses them before the students assess a selection of them. The work from
+ the students may well be assessed by the teacher, at least in part, and
+ very possibly by a number of students. A workshop allows the teacher to award
+ a proportion of the grade to the student's assessments, the remainder of
+ the grade is allocated to the assessments of the work itself. (The
+ proportions of the grade given to these two areas is set towards the end of
+ the workshop.) A student's assessments are given a grade based on how well
+ they match the corresponding assessments make by the teacher. (In the
+ absence of a teacher assessment then the average of the peer assessments is
+ used).</p>
+
+<p>The degree of agreement between the student's and teacher's assessment is
+ based on the differences between the scores in individual elements
+ (actually the squared differences are used). The mean of these differences
+ must to converted into a meaningful grade. The "Comparison of
+ Assessments" option allows the teacher a degree of control on how
+ these comparisons are converted into grades.</p>
+
+<p>To get some idea on what effect this option has, take the (fairly simple)
+ case of an assessment which has ten Yes/No questions. For example the
+ assessment might use questions like "Is the chart correctly formatted?",
+ "Is the calculated profit $100.66?", etc. Assume there are ten such
+ questions. When the "Very Lax" setting is chosen, prefect
+ agreement between the student's and teacher's assessment gives a grade of
+ 100%, if there is only one question which does not match the grade is 90%,
+ two disagreements give a grade of 80%, three
+ disagreements 70%, etc.. That might seem very reasonable and you might be thinking
+ why is this option called a "Very Lax" comparison. Well, consider
+ the case of a student doing a completely random assessment where the
+ answers of the ten questions are simply
+ guessed. On average this would result in five of the ten questions being
+ matched. So the "monkey's" assessment would get a grade of around
+ 50%. The situation gets a little more sensible with the "Lax"
+ option, then
+ the random assessment gets around 20%. When the "Fair" option is
+ chosen, random guessing will result in a zero grade most of the
+ time. At this level, a grade of 50% is given when the two assessments agree
+ on eight questions of the ten. If three questions are in disagreement then
+ the grade given is 25%. When the option is set to "Strict" having
+ two questions out of sync gives a grade of 40%. Moving into the "Very
+ Strict" territory a disagreement in just two questions drops the grade to
+ 35% and having a single question in disagreement gives a grade of 65%.</p>
+
+<p>This example is sightly artifical as most assessments usually have elements
+ which have a range of values rather than just Yes or No. In those cases the
+ comparison is likely to result in somewhat higher grades then the values
+ indicated above. The various levels (Very Lax, Lax, Fair...) are given so
+ that the teacher can fine tune the comparisons. If they feel that the grades
+ being given for assessments are too low then this option should be moved
+ towards the "Lax" or even "Very Lax" choices. And
+ alternatively, if the grades for the student's assessments are, in general,
+ felt to be too high this option should be moved to either the
+ "Strict" or "Very Strict" choices. It is really a
+ matter of trial and error with the best starting point being the
+ "Fair" option.</p>
+
+<p>During the course of the workshop the teacher may feel that the grades given
+ to the student assessments are either too high or too low. These grades are
+ shown on the exercise's Administration Page. In this case, the teacher can
+ change the setting of this option and re-calculate the student assessment
+ grades (the "Grading Grades"). The re-calculation is done by
+ clicking the "Re-grade Student Assessments" link found on the
+ administration page of the workshop. This can be safely performed at any
+ time in the workshop.</p>
+
--- /dev/null
+<p align="center"><b>The Grade of the Submissions</b></p>
+
+<p>This value determines the maximum grade which can be awarded to a <b>submission</b>.</p>
+
+<p>The overall grade for the workshop is the sum of the (average) grade of the student's
+ assessments and the grade from their submission(s). Thus if the (maximum)
+ grade for the student's assessments is set to 30 and the (maximum) grade for
+ the submissions is 70 the (maximum) grade for the workshop is 100.</p>
+
+<p>This value can be changed at any time and the effect on the grades seen by
+ the students (and the teacher) is immediate.</p>
+
--- /dev/null
+<p align=center><b>Grade of Student Assessments</b></p>
+
+<p>This is the maximum grade given to the assessments make by students of their
+ own and/or other work. That is, the grade for their assessments. The actual
+ grades for an assessment is calculated by the workshop module by comparing
+ that assessment with the "best" assessment of the same submission. The
+ "best" assessment is the one which is closest to the mean of all
+ the assessments. (This is a "weighted" mean if the teacher's
+ assessment are given a weight greater than one.) Note that if there is only
+ one assessment of an submission, that single assessemnt is taken as the
+ best. If there are are two assessments of an submission, both are
+ considered "best". Only when there are three or more assessments
+ does the module start to make distinctions between the assessments.</p>
+
+<p>This grade is sometimes called the "grading grade" and is
+ <i><b>not</b></i> the maximum grade given to the work, that grade is called
+ "Grade for Submissions".</p>
+
+<p>A student's grade for the workshop is the sum of this grade and the grade
+ for their submission(s). Thus if the (maximum) grade for the Student
+ assessments is set at 20 and the (maximum) grade for submission is set to
+ 80, then the (maximum) grade for the workshop is 100.</p>
+
+<p>This value can be changed at any time and the effect on the grades seen by
+ the students (and the teacher) is immediate.</p>
+
--- /dev/null
+<P ALIGN=CENTER><B>Weight of Teacher's Assessments</B></P>
+
+<P>This option, usually set at 1, can be used to either "switch off"
+ any assessments made by the teacher, to give them an equal weight as the
+ student assessments, or give them more weight than the student assessemnts.</p>
+
+<p>The normal value for this option is 1. This gives the teacher's assessments
+ the same weight as student assessments.</p>
+
+<p>There may arise circumstances when it is felt that the students are consistently
+ "over grading" assessments, that is giving their peers too high a
+ grade. The oposite may happen when the peer grading is too low (but that is
+ more unusual). The poor grading by the students can be compensated, to a
+ degree, by increasing the value of this option. Setting the value to 5, for
+ example, means that if there are 5 student assessments of each submission,
+ say, then the teacher's assessment has the same weight (in dropping suspect
+ assessments and in determining the grade)
+ as all 5 of the student assessments. Further in the analysis of assessments,
+ student assessments which do not agree with that of the teacher are more
+ likely to be dropped when this option is greater than one. The remaining
+ assessments are closer to the teacher's grade thus giving even more weight
+ to the teacher's assessment.</p>
+
+<p>This option can be changed at any time during the assignment.</p>
+
--- /dev/null
+<P ALIGN=CENTER><B>UnGraded Assessments</B></P>
+
+<P>In general, the assessments made by students are given a (small) proportion
+ of marks which count towards their final grade. The grading of these
+ assessments (and those made by the teacher) is done in the background by
+ the workshop module. Provided a submission is assessed
+ three or more times, the module can make a reasonable estimate of each
+ assessment's "worth". (For submissions which have been assessed
+ only once or twice, these assessments are given the maximum "grading
+ grade".) As this grading process is done at regular intervals, the
+ number of ungraded assessments will normally be zero.</p>
+
+<p>The function of this link is to force a re-calculation of the grading grades,
+ the grades given to assessments. The teacher may want to do this when either
+ of these two options is changed:
+<ol>
+ <li>The option "Comparison of Assessments";</li>
+ <li>The weighting given to the teacher's assessments.</li>
+</ol>
+ Clicking on this link will immediately bring the grading grades up-to-date,
+ reflecting the current values given to these parameters. Changes to other
+ the settings of the workshop, such as the value for the grading grade
+ itself, do <b>not</b> require this re-calculation to be performed.</p>
+
projects / moodle.git / commitdiff