In Financial Economics and International Monetary Economics this semester, you'll be asked to do two large projects. One focuses on understanding data and models, and the other on macroeconomic country-level descriptions of individual markets like Oil, Gas, and Gold. This year you will be doing the grading of other student's work. The quality of your appraisal will effect their mark, and the depth of your appraisal will effect your own.
How does it work?
Each project carries a substantial percentage of your overall grade--40%. You get this 40% by submitting a really high quality piece of coherent, edited, informed writing (30%), and by commenting on and reviewing other students' work on the same project (10%).
An example. Let's take three students, Arran, Betty, and Cillian. All submit two copies of their projects (on time). Each student has their identity stripped, and each student gets a number. Arran is person 1, Betty is person 2, and Cillian is person 3. We swop their submissions.
Person 1 gets to read persons 2 and 3, grade them according to the form we'll discuss in a minute, and return a grade. Both the lecturer and the TA will of course check that person 1 is doing a good job. Then person 2 reads 1 and 3, person 3 reads 1 and 2. All provide detailed written feedback and a guideline grade for the lecturer and TA, who also reads the work, and gives feedback.
Won't people just exchange papers, give each other A1s, and cheat?
Because each submission is anonymised and formatted in the same way, with the same questions, with a class of over 150, it's unlikely you'll be scored by both your friends (ha ha ha, now get back to work) in the same way, and if it seems to the lecturer or TA that you've colluded in this way, you'll all get 0, so there's a strong disincentive to cheating.
Alright, we won't cheat. Get to the point.
Say person 1, Arran, gets an average of 55% from both the reviewers, and he does a great job of reviewing their work. He'll get, say, 8% of his reviewing score, and end up with 63% for that part of the assessment.
What if Arran feels messed about by the process?
All appeals go straight to Stephen, who'll process them immediately.
The process take should about 2 weeks.
Why do all this?
In addition to preparing a high quality written submission, which encourages students to research, synthesize arguments, tabulate and chart data, source appropriately, and write on an academic topic, the peer review process will teach students to read and evaluate work critically. Each student will have their work read by 3 people and get feedback from all 3, helping students (and the lecturer and TA) to improve.
Really though, how do I do this?
We'll provide examples and support in tutorials, honest.