The PRESTO Project relay: Open, Asynchronous Learning in Virtual Peer Groups

Abstract

Academic education entails that students engage in open-ended assignments. Global education entails that students interact in projects with peers world-wide. The logistic challenge of offering academic project work to a large, heterogeneous student body, while keeping instructor workload manageable, is daunting. Project relays on the PRESTO software platform meet this challenge. In a project relay, students work in a virtual peer group on assignments that are organized in successive steps, where each step is peer reviewed. Unlike a regular peer review, the reviewing students revise the work they have reviewed. They then add the next step to it, and pass the improved-and-extended work on to another student. The PRESTO software fully automates the relay workflow, facilitates defining, monitoring, and grading projects, and has been adapted for use in LTI-compliant MOOCs. Since 2013, over 20 project relays have run in several courses at Delft University of Technology. Evaluations show that a project relay realizes the intended learning outcomes, but can at times be stressful for students. This prompts ideas for further pedagogical and technical improve¬ments.