IT Skills Focus

Prior to Semester

1. Identify tasks related to the development of IT skills and which comprise a set sequence of actions.  For example, using a Vlookup function in an Excel formula or following an Access database wizard.  Perhaps a list of such tasks is prepared for students to select from. If considered appropriate, you can also create an example flow chart or similar diagram to show what is expected as a product. 
   OR
   Encourage students to select their own authentic task or context.

2. Prepare a peer review of the task, e.g. rubric, to illustrate what is expected at each stage.

3. Setup a forum to upload the learning evidence. 

In Class

4. Ask students to work in pairs on tasks of their choice.  For example, if using a Vlookup function in Excel, they could relate that to calculating grade letters from numeric scores. Encourage them to choose IT related tasks which they feel they do not yet know well and settings which are interesting to them.

5. Ask each pair to produce an aid to practise and learn the task. At its simplest this could be a set of text instructions but it would be good to challenge the students to be more creative.  Possible methods include flowcharts, maps, PowerPoints, bulleted lists, annotated screenshots, YouTube videos and so on.

6. Collect evidence of the work from each pair through a shared wiki.  In some cases when using free online tools the final product might be a URL.

7. Ask each pairs to post their evidence of learning in the forum.

8. Assign each pair to review a task produced by another pair based on the supplied rubric and then post their review or critique in the forum.

9. Ask pairs to reflect on their review or critiques.

EXTENSION
It is possible to expand peer review to include multiple reviews and reviewing pairs and this may be a viable strategy for large groups. In this case additional thought could be given to the way in which results are presented or handled. A common process is to discard the highest and lowest mark from the rubrics and allocate an average of the remaining marks as a grade or mark for the individual pairs. This final mark could be used to award badges or assign leaderboard positions as part of a wider gamification strategy.