ABSTRACT

For a geography bachelor course about climate change, we replaced the end-of-course exam with one term paper and three term-paper peer reviews. Our objectives were to design a learning environment where students read continuously throughout the semester, develop their writing skills, become familiar with quality criteria for academic texts, and get trained in applying these. To support students in their term-paper writing and term-paper peer reviews, we arranged two annotated-bibliography exercises as optional learning activities. A t-test demonstrated a statistically significant increase in performance for those who participated in these exercises compared to those who did not. A survey confirmed that students still doubt their own and their peer students’ capability to provide authoritative reviews, but qualitative interviews supported the findings that a majority of students found the peer-review process valuable for their reading behaviours and the development of their writing skills. The improvements, however, were mostly related to form (such as structure, grammar, and how to set up a proper reference list) and less related to academic content.

摘要

对于关于气候变化的地理学学士课程，我们用一篇学期论文和三篇学期论文同行评议取代了期末考试。我们的目标是设计一个学习环境，让学生在整个学期不断阅读，培养他们的写作技巧，熟悉学术文本的质量标准，并接受应用这些标准的培训。为了支持学生的学期论文写作和学期论文同行评审，我们安排了两个带注释的参考书目练习作为可选的学习活动。t 检验表明，与没有参加这些练习的人相比，参加这些练习的人的表现在统计上显着提高。一项调查证实，学生仍然怀疑自己和同龄学生提供权威评论的能力，但定性访谈支持了大多数学生发现同行评审过程对他们的阅读行为和写作技巧的发展有价值的发现。然而，这些改进主要与形式有关（例如结构、语法以及如何设置适当的参考列表），而与学术内容的相关性较少。