Maura Strassberg, professor of law, was selected as ITS’ digital faculty member of the month for November. Read a brief interview between Strassberg and ITS.

What type of technology (hardware/software) do you use? 

Peerceptiv website/software

What course do you use it in? 

Contracts I

In what context do you use this technology? 

Guided peer review of answers to problems testing understanding and written communication of application of the law to facts.

How does this type of technology align with your teaching pedagogy? 

Students learn the most from active use of what they learn, but need considerable feedback to recognize deficiencies. Peerceptiv allows me to guide students’ review of their peers’ work in a way that approximates my own review, which is important for a class of 50+ students. I especially appreciate the way it exposes them to a wide range of peer answers anonymously, which allows them to start differentiating better, worse, and alternative ways to address the problem. It handles all the administration of this, from submission of student answers, distribution of anonymized peer answers for their review, and an algorithm-based grading mechanism that I used more to identify students who were behind their peers than to generate grades.

Where did you get the inspiration to make a change? 

I started taking an online course in evidence-based pedagogy in the STEM fields and stumbled on a reference to it.

How long did it take for you to implement this technology?

A fair amount of time. I worked online over the summer with a small group of law professor pioneers attempting to adapt this STEM-oriented program to the law school setting, creating rubrics and exercises and then testing them on ourselves. Once I started to adapt my old problems and answers to this platform, it took several hours a week to redesign the materials and input materials into the platform. Next time will be much easier. I hope that having my experience to support them will make it easier for my colleagues to give it a try.

Are you interested in trying out new technology in your classroom? Want help from ITS staff? Schedule a technology adoption consultation.  

—Erin Ulrich, CPHS, and Carla Herling, ITS