Transcript No Slide Title

Calibrated Peer
TM
Review
Orville L. Chapman,
Arlene A. Russell, and Michael A. Fiore
University of California, Los Angeles
CPR Design
CPR design is based on peer review of scientific
proposals and manuscripts.
 CPR permits only competent, calibrated peer
review of student documents
 CPR ensures careful reading for content.
 CPR makes students conscious of style issues.
 CPR enables learning by writing.

Motivation for Creating CPR
Science Literacy
 Constructivist Learning
 Critical Thinking

Science Literacy
Literacy

Discourse based on comprehension,
understanding, organization, and
logic.
Construction of Knowledge
Integration of new knowledge
 Organization of knowledge
 Critical evaluation of new
information

Critical Thinking
Rigorous thinking
 Testing ideas and data against
existing intellectual models
 Rejecting intellectual models
 Creating new intellectual models

Bloom’s Taxonomy of the
Cognitive Domain
CPR
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Evaluation--highest level
 Synthesis
 Analysis
 Application
 Comprehension
 Knowledge--lowest level

What Is CPR?
CPR is a network learning tool.
 CPR is accessed through an Internet browser.
 CPR is platform independent.
 CPR enables writing assignments in any class,
regardless of size or subject. CPR works even
with the largest classes.
 CPR enables shared writing assignments
among institutions over the Internet.

Two factors Make CPR Special:
CPR is discipline independent. Art,
anthropology, English, social science,
history, economics, business, law,
chemistry, physics, life science, and
mathematics are using it. CPR can serve
any curriculum.
 CPR is level independent. It serves grades
6-12, colleges and universities, graduate and
professional schools.

What Does CPR Comprise?
Student interface
 Instructor interface
 Assignment authoring tool
 Reporting tool
 Assignment management system
 Assignment libraries

How Does CPR Work?
The instructor gives the student a writing
assignment.
 The student submits his or her document to
CPR electronically.
 CPR then gives the student three calibration
documents for review.
 When the student has completed the
calibration, CPR provides a detailed report
on the student’s performance.

How Does CPR Work?
After the student has successfully
completed the calibration, CPR provides
three peer documents for review.
 CPR then gives the student his or her
document for self-review.
 Finally, CPR provides a detailed report of
the peer review and the self-review.

The Review Process
The review process is the same for
calibration, peer review, and self-review.
 The student answers content questions for
each document.
 The student answers style questions for
each document.
 The student assigns a score to each
document on a 1 to 10 basis.

Student Reports

summary of the calibration results
Instructor Reports
CPR provides a detailed report on each
individual student’s work.
 CPR delivers a detailed summary report for
the class.
 CPR reports are broken down among
calibration, peer reviews, and self-review.
 Students are scored on their writing and
their reviewing.

Assignment Libraries
Molecular Science Library
 CSUN Business School Library
 Libraries enable frequent writing
assignments with minimal instructor
time.

Creating CPR Assignments
Identify important course topics.
 Locate appropriate sources for student learning.
 Compose appropriate guiding questions.
 Write the calibration documents--one should be
an exemplar.
 Create carefully crafted content and style
questions.
 Have peers review your assignment.

Creating CPR Assignments:
Start by reading “Workshop Manual and
Writing CPR Assignments,” by Arlene
Russell.
 To obtain a copy of the manual or to get
advice on creating CPR assignments,
contact Arlene Russell: russell@chem.
ucla.edu.

Collaborative Library Building
Among institutions (NM CC’s; Other CC’s)
 Within an institution (CSUN Business
School)
 Within a project (MSC consortium)
 Within a school cluster (Narbonne-San
Pedro School Cluster, ~24,000 students).
 Publishing Companies
 Consortia and individual partnerships

If You Create CPR Assignments,
You will change the way you teach.
 You will sharpen the focus on what you
want your students to learn.
 You will become more effective.
 You will be forced to ponder issues that you
are currently ignoring.
 You will be forced to define your
assessment strategy first.

How We Use CPR
Create a scientific database.
 Design an exploration of that database.
 Give the students guiding questions that lead them
to ask the questions that really matter.
 Assign a writing task.
 Create carefully thought out content and style
questions.
 Have colleagues criticize the content and edit the
assignment.

A Useful Guide

John C. Bean, “Engaging Ideas:
The Professor’s Guide to
Integrating Writing, Critical
Thinking, and Active Learning in
the Classroom,” Jossey-Bass, San
Francisco, 1996
What Does CPR Achieve?
Students learn science by writing. They
construct meaning.
 Students develop their writing skills.
 Students learn to evaluate peer writing.
 Students learn abstracting, reading for content,
and self-evaluation.
 Students think more deeply about important
aspects of what they are studying.

Using CPR, Students Learn
Observation through description.
 Comprehension and understanding through
analysis and clear, precise expression.
 Evaluation through critical assessment of peer
work.
 Synthesis and argument through organization
and logical expression.

CPR Enables
Development of an instructor’s own writing
assignments, at a cost of about 6-8 hours per
assignment using the authoring tool.
 Collaborative assignment development over
the net.
 Significant student writing with little instructor
effort (about 5 minutes per assignment), using
assignment libraries.
 Cooperative distance-learning courses

An AP Chemistry Course,
Arlene Russell
A one-year AP course, which bears credit,
for rural high school students is being
distributed as distance learning.
 This project is funded by the Office of the
President of the University of California.
 This course is designed around use of
learning objects from the Molecular Science
Curriculum project and CPR.

Does CPR Work?
A study from CSUN Business School:
 Two economics classes, each about 40
students, were selected for the study.
 Both classes took the same examinations.
 On each examination, two questions were
taken from material not covered by CPR
assignments.

Does CPR Work?
On each examination, two questions
covered material that the test class had
studied as CPR assignments and the control
class had learned in lecture and discussion
sections.
 On the essay questions in which neither
class had access to CPR assignments, the
two classes were indistinguishable.

Does CPR Work?
On essay questions in which one class had
used traditional methods and the other class
used CPR, the CPR class scored 60% better
than the traditional class.
 These results were confirmed in a second
test of the same design.

What Makes CPR Special?
CPR is discipline independent.
 CPR is level independent.
 CPR has been used by more than
10,000 students.

CPR Funding
The National Science Foundation through
the initiative for reform in chemical
education
 The Howard Hughes Medical Institute, for
applications in life science

If you have questions about
CPR,
Contact Orville L. Chapman, at
[email protected], or Arlene A. Russell, at
[email protected]. You may access the slides
and text for this presentation at
http://www.molsci.ucla.edu/chapman/cpr.htm.