A Study On Effects Of Rubric-based Peer Assessment On Students’ Online Learning Engagement

Emerging as a brand-new mode of teaching,MOOCs have received a global attention due to its openness and large-scale dissemination advantages.However,shortcomings such as ineffective interaction,high dropout rates and other issues have hindered its development.With e-Learning such as MOOCs and other digital educational practices becoming more prevalent,how to effectively measure and enhance online learning engagement has become the main concern of research.In recent years,relevant scholars have been prioritizing learners’ online behavioural engagement,while subjective emotional factors and cognitive processes have been neglected.Focusing on cognitive and emotional engagement,this study attempts to investigate students’ current learning engagement situation within the oral English MOOC context and explore the effects of rubric-based peer assessment on students’ online learning engagement.With the above considerations in mind,two research questions are explored in this thesis:(1)To what extent are students engaged in oral English MOOCs learning?(2)What are the effects of rubric-based peer assessment on students’ online learning engagement?To address the above research questions,this study carried out rubric-based peer assessment on pedagogical activities to examine students’ current learning engagement situation in the oral English MOOC context and investigate the effects of rubric-based peer assessment on students’ learning engagement.“College Oral English: Skills & Competence”— an oral English MOOC set up by a university in Guangdong Province on the MOOC platform Xuetang X in the summer academic semester of 2021 was taken as an example.To guarantee higher validity of this research,quantitative and qualitative data was collected through a combination of research methodologies including examining the experimental and control groups’ learning engagement data,analyzing data from Xuetang X,surveying feedback with questionnaires,and conducting structured interviews.The adoption of multiple sources and methods allows for methodological rigor of the study.A no-rubric peer assessment activity was carried out in the first two weeks of the course.The results of the descriptive statistics showed that the students’ learning engagement was stable at an above medium level,as the cognitive,emotional,and behavioural engagement of the students all remained to be further enhanced.This conclusion was consistent with the results of the preliminary structured interview.Two rubric-based peer assessment activities were conducted with rubric training for the experimental group in the eighth and ninth weeks of the course.The paired-samples t-test and independent-samples t-test results suggested rubric-based peer assessment has a significantly positive impact on students’ learning engagement on all three dimensions.This study provides a new angle of research on the study of students’ learning engagement in oral English MOOCs.Methodologically,it fills up the gap of employing rubric-based peer assessment in oral English MOOCs to examine such an assessment’s effects on students’ learning engagement,verifying the applicability of rubric-based peer assessment to oral English MOOCs.Practically,the findings of this study are expected to be a helpful reference for instructors in developing an understanding of students’ current learning engagement in oral English MOOCs and leading to improved realization of the significant advantages of the online rubric-based peer assessment in enhancing the degree of students’ learning engagement and optimizing the pedagogical design.