Reducing Volcanic Hazards to People and Property - An Assignment with Electronic Peer Review
This activity was selected for the On the Cutting Edge Reviewed Teaching Collection
This activity has received positive reviews in a peer review process involving five review categories. The five categories included in the process are
- Scientific Accuracy
- Alignment of Learning Goals, Activities, and Assessments
- Pedagogic Effectiveness
- Robustness (usability and dependability of all components)
- Completeness of the ActivitySheet web page
For more information about the peer review process itself, please see http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/review.html.
This page first made public: Nov 14, 2006
This material is replicated on a number of sites as part of the SERC Pedagogic Service Project
Context for Use
When distributing this assignment to the students, it is helpful to them if they see the peer review sheet that will be used on their paper. An open-ended form will provide students the most constructive feedback. Instructors can create an online feedback form with these questions for students to submit their reviews as another option.
Students should type their paper using MS Word and NOT include their name anywhere in the text. Tell students to use their last name as the file name, then email you the file. If faculty do not wish to conceal student identity from one another, then the faculty member can forward on the papers to another student. For anonymity, faculty can rename the files before forwarding the email attachment. To simplify distributing the files for peer review, an instructor may want to consider having two students read each other's papers.
When a student concludes their electronic peer review, they should save the file and send as an attachment back to the instructor. The instructor can then review the comments and send the file on to the original student writer.
Volcano list: the following is a list of volcanoes you may want to have students choose from. These volcanoes are considered major threats because of their explosive histories and proximity to large population centers: Mt. Vesuvius (Italy), Popocatepetl (Mexico), Ulawun (Papua New Guinea), Merapi (Indonesia), Nyiragongo (DR Congo), Unzen (Japan), Sakura-jima (Japan), Galeras (Columbia).
Teaching Notes and Tips
- Be sure students are clear with the assignment instructions - both for completing the written assignment and conducting the peer review. You may want to complete a mock peer review in the classroom before giving this assignment.
- Give students enough time to complete the assignment.
- Decide whether you want students to reveal their identities to each other for the peer review or remain in anonymity. This will decide if you need to rename files before you send them on for peer review.
- Save the student files in a folder on your computer that is not in your email attachments folder. This way, the assignments will be easy to find and review.