Video transcript
Slide 1: Title slide
No narration. [5 seconds]
Slide 2: Video
Welcome to our peer assessor tutorial for SSSC Open Badges. This is the online version of what would normally be a morning or afternoon workshop to provide you with everything you need to know about becoming a peer assessor. You should allow yourself three and half hours to complete the learning activities and the assessment exercise at the end.
You can stop and take a break whenever you like and even come back to the tutorial after several days. However, if you change your web browser or device between sessions your progress will not carry over to the new browser or device. You should use the same device or browser until you have completed the tutorial and I recommend you leave the tutorial open in your browser until you have finished it and downloaded your results.
Successful completion of this tutorial is necessary to achieve the Peer assessor Open Badge.
Slide 3: Why assess?
Every badge on SSSC Open Badges requires an applicant to submit evidence showing they meet the criteria for that badge. These submissions are assessed by real people before a decision is made on whether to award a badge.
This is not done to deliberately make badges difficult but to help people improve their reflective writing ability over time. By encouraging people to provide the best evidence they can, they can get into the habit of reflecting on their learning and how to record it more effectively.
Each badge has a criteria that sets a minimum standard expected and this is assessed against a framework we call the SSSC Open Badges rubric. One in every three applications for badges does not meet this minimum standard. For some badges, the ratio can be much higher – with most applications failing first time round. By letting people know their evidence does not meet that standard, we give people an opportunity to improve their work and achieve the badge second time round.
If we didn’t assess and just awarded badges to everybody regardless of effort or understanding then SSSC Open Badges would not hold any value amongst employers, training providers or others who people choose to show their badges to.
Slide 4: What is peer assessment?
Peer assessment is where learners assess each other’s work against a clear and specific framework. That means you will be assessing the applications other people submit for badges.
It has benefits for both the badge applicant and for you. The applicants get responses to their applications faster and get more detailed feedback.
You get to see alternative ways people respond to the questions asked by the badge criteria. They may have ideas or observations you might not have explored and could learn from in your own badge applications. Not to mention, just understanding how to assess badges itself, will make you far better at preparing your own badge evidence in future.
This makes learning more visible, and it becomes much more of a team effort as people actively held others develop and grow.
Slide 5: Peer assessment on SSSC Open Badges
Up until Summer 2021, assessment was the sole responsibility of badge issuers. But this was not sustainable. It meant issuers spent all their time assessing applications for their existing badges instead of creating new badges for people to earn.
We are now using anonymous peer assessment as our preferred approach to assessing badges. This means when someone applies for a badge, their evidence submission will be assessed by three other people who already hold that badge alongside our peer assessor badge. You will never know who submitted the badge application you are assessing or who the other assessors are, and they will never know who you are. A majority decision will determine whether a badge is awarded.
As a peer assessor, you would never be invited to assess submissions for a badge you have not achieved yourself. This is a big difference between how peer assessment works on SSSC Open Badges compared to elsewhere – for example large online courses where people assess other learners while their own work is still being assessed (effectively swapping each other’s work so the other can mark it) – we do not believe this is fair to you or to the person whose work you are assessing. Because we use a different model, we need to award points every time you assess a submission – and you can request and assess as many submissions as you like – potentially earning as many points as you like.
You can spend these points applying for badges only available to people who are enrolled in peer assessment. The points help us keep things balanced and make sure there are always enough assessors available to cover the badge applications coming in.
Slide 6: How to become a peer assessor?
By watching this video, you have already taken your first step towards becoming a peer assessor.
Once you have completed the other videos and practice assessments in this tutorial, you will be able to move on to the final assessment exercise where your assessment skills will be put to the test. Once you pass this exercise you will be able to apply for the peer assessment Open Badge. Please remember to download and attach your results to your badge application – these will be ready for you to download as soon as you pass the final assessment exercise.
Once we receive your application for the peer assessor badge, you will hear from us within 28 days. As well as looking at your evidence for the badge, we will examine whether your account is in good standing before granting you peer assessor privileges. This means making sure there are no concerns about things like plagiarism on your account or that you do not have any recently revoked badges as a result of terms and conditions breaches.
Slide 7: Your role as an assessor
Once you are enrolled in peer assessment, a new icon for it will appear on your SSSC Open Badges account page.
We ask that you occasionally login, open the icon and request applications for assessment. Doing this regularly will keep the assessment rubric fresh in your mind. When you do request applications for assessment, please assess them as quickly as possible as the person will not get a decision on their badge application until you do this.
You can provide feedback to the learner, and it is up to you how much detail you include. If the learner decides your feedback was the most helpful, then you will earn an extra point for your assessment. I will go into more detail about feedback under the observe an assessment part of this tutorial.
Slide 8: Quality assurance
Quality assurance is the process of revisiting assessment decisions to make sure all assessors follow the assessment criteria explained later in this tutorial. It is an important part of making sure the badges we issue stand up to scrutiny and our decisions as assessors are fair and robust.
Some of the submissions you will be invited to assess will belong to badges already awarded. Where this happens, your decision will be used to verify the decision made by the original assessor – either a fellow peer assessor or even an SSSC assessor like me. This means you will be a key part of quality assuring decisions and where necessary, SSSC assessors will investigate if your decision calls the original into question.
This also means, your decisions will be subject to the same quality assurance as well. This is nothing to worry about and we would contact you informally with feedback on how to improve your assessments if there are any concerns.
In extreme circumstances, SSSC may remove your ability to peer assess. This would only happen if you repeatedly fail to use the rubric explained in this tutorial and approve submissions which clearly don’t meet the minimum requirement it sets. So long as you have a copy of the rubric and refer to it when in any doubt about a submission, you have nothing to worry about. And we would never un-enrol someone from peer assessment for decisions about borderline submissions which arguably could have gone one way or the other.
Even where peer assessor privileges are removed, undertaking this tutorial again or subsequent refresher tutorials should be enough to get enrolled in peer assessment again.
Slide 9: Video
This tutorial is split into nine parts. You have almost finished part one, the introduction.
The following five parts cover the different factors we assess evidence submissions for an Open Badges against. At the end of each, there are practice assessments to check your knowledge of these.
You will then be able to observe me assessing real applications for badges and walking your through my rationale for the scores, decision, and feedback I give.
Then it will be your turn to assess a series of submissions from start to finish. After you have completed this assessment exercise, you will be presented with your results. If you have passed, you should save a copy of these and attach them to your application for the Peer assessor Open Badge.
Slide 10: Help and support
As you work through the tutorial you will likely have questions about some of the material or our approach to assessment. You can post questions to the peer assessment forum on SSSC Open Badges or contact us directly by email. Webinars are held every two months for peer assessors to ask questions, make suggestions and to address any concerns. You are welcome to join these webinars before becoming a peer assessor.
Slide 11: Assessment factors
Throughout this introduction and the following tutorial, you will hear me talking about the rubric or factors we assess submissions against. The rubric is generic set of factors applicable to all badges issued through SSSC Open Badges. There are five factors in total, and we will look at each of these over the next five videos. At the end of each video, you will have to opportunity to practice assessing.
Slide 12: Thank you
No narration. [10 seconds]
