Maastricht University Library Wall

CORE: peer assessment via the Content System

Practice-information
Persons involved: ca. 600 students in medicine of year 1 and 2 and their supervisors, ca 55.
Purpose of the practice: Electronic peer assessment of reports of simulated patients contacts.

The so called CORE (an abbreviation of the Dutch: Consultvoering en Reflectie-onderwijs, in English: consulting and reflection education) is a recurring part of the medical curriculum of years 1, 2 and 3. Students have to submit five reports of their simulated patient contacts, and read and comment on the reports of theirs peers. For this purpose peer groups consisting of 10 or 11 students and a tutor are formed. Since 2007 each year a structure of folders is in the Content System of Blackboard is realized in order to enable the students to submit their reports and comments electronically. Different permissions have been granted to different folders in order to enable students to read and add comments to each others reports while at the same time privacy is guaranteed where needed, e.g. in folders with comments of supervisors.

Tools
Blackboard Content System, this system offers the possibility to share documents and folders according to preset permissions.

Results
This system works well, since the upgrade to Bb8 however, some problems have occurred with users accessing EleUM via Internet Explorer 8.

Investments
The tool was already available as part of the electronic learning environment (EleUM). A substantial amount of time has been invested in the yearly realization of the folder structure and the setting of the permissions. Next year a tool will be developed to do this automatically.

Contact information
Name: Myriam de Ruijter
Faculty: FHML
e-mail address: myriam.deruijter@pn.unimaas.nl
telephone number: 043-3685314  

AV, 4-11-2009