Dancing with the devil: formative peer assessment and academic performance
- Authors: Mostert, Markus , Snowball, Jeanette D
- Date: 2013
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/69301 , vital:29483 , https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2012.705262
- Description: Peer assessment can be important in developing active and independent learners, as well as providing more and faster feedback in large classes, compared to marking done by tutors. In addition, the evaluative, critical stance required by students in order to assess their peers' work encourages the development of higher-order cognitive skills. Changing roles from being assessed to being an assessor can also improve students' ability to judge and improve on their own work. However, peer assessment does have potential problems and there is some debate as to the appropriate academic level at which to implement it, the kinds of feedback that are given and the ways in which students respond. In addition, there is little evidence that peer assessment has an impact on academic performance. This research reports the results of an online peer assessment exercise for a macroeconomics essay conducted in a large Economics 1 class at Rhodes University. Of the 800 students, about half participated in the peer assessment exercise. Data were collected from students via a formal course evaluation. In addition, a sample of 50 essays was evaluated in terms of the relationship between peer marks and final (tutor) marks received and the impact that peer assessment had on the quality of the final essay submitted. An Ordinary Least Squares regression was used to investigate the impact of peer assessment participation on marks. Results showed that peer marks tended to ‘bunch’ in the 60–68% range, indicating the reluctance of peers to give very high or low marks. In general, peers gave more useful feedback on technical aspects, such as presentation and referencing (which were also the categories in which students most often made improvements), than on content. Regression analysis showed that peer assessment participation was not a significant determinant of final essay mark, but that economics ability and English language proficiency were.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2013
Determinants of life satisfaction among race groups in South Africa
- Authors: Ebrahim, Amina , Botha, Ferdi , Snowball, Jeanette D
- Date: 2013
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/69311 , vital:29497 , https://doi.org/10.1080/0376835x.2013.797227
- Description: Economic indicators, like gross domestic product per capita, are commonly used as indicators of welfare. However, they have a very limited and narrow scope, excluding many potentially important welfare determinants, such as health, relative income and religion – not surprising since they were not designed to fill this role. As a result, there is growing acceptance, and use of, subjective measures of well-being (called ‘happiness’ or ‘life satisfaction’, often used interchangeably) both worldwide and in South Africa. Happiness economics does not propose to replace income-based measures of well-being, but rather attempts to complement them with broader measures, which can be important in making policy decisions that optimise societal welfare. This paper tests for differences in subjective well-being between race groups in South Africa, and investigates the determinants of self-rated life satisfaction for each group. Using the 2008 National Income Dynamics Study data, descriptive methods (analysis of variance) and an ordered probit model are applied. Results indicate that reported life satisfaction differs substantially among race groups, with black South Africans being the least satisfied group despite changes since the advent of democracy in 1994. Higher levels of educational attainment increased satisfaction for the whole sample, and women (particularly black women) are generally less satisfied than men. As found in many other studies, unemployed people have lower levels of life satisfaction than the employed, even when controlling for income and relative income. The determinants of life satisfaction are also different for each race group: white South Africans attach greater importance to physical health, whereas employment status and absolute income matter greatly for black people. For coloured people and black people, positional status (as measured by relative income) is an important determinant of well-being, with religious involvement contributing significantly to the well-being of Indian people.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2013
Valerie Møller: a pioneer in South African Quality of Life Research
- Authors: Moller, Valerie
- Date: 2013
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/67205 , vital:29059 , https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-013-9249-3
- Description: publisher version , Professor Valerie Møller is Professor Emeritus of Quality of Life Studies at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa. Before that she was director of the Institute of Social and Economic Research at Rhodes University (1998–2006) and headed the Quality of Life Research Unit at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa, in the 1990s. She completed her primary school education in North Carolina, USA, and her secondary and tertiary education in Zürich, Switzerland. She earned Lic. Phil and DPhil degrees from the University of Zürich, majoring in sociology. She has lived and worked in Southern Africa since 1972. Together with the late Professor Lawrence Schlemmer she developed the first survey instruments to measure objective and subjective well-being among South Africans from all walks of life. The South African Quality of Life Trends Study has tracked happiness and life satisfaction from apartheid to the transition to democracy (1983–2012).
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2013