Fostering and supporting empirical research on evaluative judgement via a crowdsourced adaptive learning system

Abstract

The value of students developing the capacity to make accurate judgements about the quality of their work and that of others has been widely recognised in higher education literature. However, despite this recognition, little attention has been paid to the development of tools and strategies with the potential both to foster evaluative judgement and to support empirical research into its growth. This paper provides a demonstration of how educational technologies may be used to fill this gap. In particular, we introduce the adaptive learning system RiPPLE and describe how it aims to (1) develop evaluative judgement in large-class settings through suggested strategies from the literature such as the use of rubrics, exemplars and peer review and (2) enable large empirical studies at low cost to determine the effect-size of such strategies. A case study demonstrating how RiPPLE has been used to achieve these goals in a specific context is presented.