January 2012 Volume 15 Number 1 - Educational Technology ...

Considering that identity concealment, instant creation and re-creation is one of the prominent features afforded by
networked technologies, the effects of three identity revelation modes—real-name (real identity), nickname (created
identity of the users’ choice) and anonymity (concealed identity), on aspects most relevant to the engaged activity
were examined: academic achievement, attitudes toward the peer-assessment strategy and perceptions toward
interacting parties, interaction process and the question-generation and peer-assessment activity.
Methods
Participants and context
A total of 101 seventh graders from three classes taught by the same instructor in southern Taiwan participated in the
study for six consecutive weeks. The study took place in a “Science and Technology” course. The study started right
after the first exam and ended prior to the second exam at the second semester of the school year.
For the duration of the study the students had class in a computer laboratory once a week where they participated in
an online question-generation and peer assessment activity after attending three 50-minute instructional sessions
allocated for biology. Four chapters on the laws of genetics, human inheritance, biotechnology, genetic consultation
and evolution were covered during the study.
Online question-generation learning system
A learning system called the Question Authoring and Reasoning Knowledge System (QuARKS) that allows students
to contribute to and benefit from the process of question generation and peer feedback was adopted for use in the
study. Essentially, QuARKS is comprised of two sub-systems—question authoring and question reasoning. For a
detailed description on the system, refer to Yu (2009).
Question authoring
In QuARKS students can author several types of questions including true-false, matching, fill-in-the-blank, multiplechoice,
short-answer, and so on. Students need to fill out several fields to complete a successful submission. For insta
nce, for multiple-choice question-generation, students need to provide a question-stem, four alternatives, an answer k
ey, and annotation for each question posed. All questions contributed by students are kept in an item bank database,
waiting to be evaluated by peers and re-defined by the author of the question in the follow-up question reasoning
phase.
Question reasoning
QuARKS employs a question reasoning system to enhance interaction, collaboration and negotiation of meaning
between question-authors and their peers (assessors). Assessors give evaluative feedback using an assessor-to-author
assessment form. Assessment criteria associated with different types of questions are provided through a pull-down
menu to foster focused, objective and constructive communication. Once feedback is received, question authors can
respond to them via an author-to-assessor form.
Experimental design and conditions
A pretest-posttest quasi-experimental research design was adopted and three treatment conditions with different
levels of identity revelation were devised for the study. The levels of identity concealment ranged from complete
concealment (i.e., the anonymity group) to partial concealment (i.e., the nickname group where the degree of
disclosure depends on how much personal information each individual is willing to reveal) to full disclosure (i.e., the
real-name group).
In the real-name condition, the student’s full name was automatically retrieved from the database and shown at the
top of the field where questions and feedback were viewed by both assessors and authors, respectively (See Fig. 1).
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