Integrating quantitative and qualitative data in assessment of wiki collaborative assignments

Abstract

Wikis are well known systems to support collaborative assignments. They provide a digital platform for asynchronous collaboration between students under the monitoring of a supervisor. Additionally, as all the students' interactions are recorded in the wiki database, teachers can retrieve interesting data for skill assessment. On the one hand, there are different approaches for skill assessment based on quantitative data obtained from the wiki. Their main advantage is that they are based on objective data that can be automatically retrieved. Unfortunately, they are rather coarse-grained and different interesting aspects regarding the contributions to the wiki can be dismissed. On the other hand, qualitative approaches offer a more detailed assessment process, but their automation is limited. This can lead to scalability problems in large groups of students. Based on our previous experience using both methods, we propose a mixed approach integrating quantitative and qualitative data for assessment of wiki collaborative assignments. It is supported by the software system Clever Figures 4 MediaWiki, which has been specifically developed for this purpose. Its application shows promising results, generating ranking and charts than combine both sources of information.