There are some resources available to staff for further information on the IPAC assessment methodology, How to explain the IPAC to the students, and also Example data that can be used to practice and experiment with the system. These resources are listed and explained below.

Introduction to the IPAC assessment methodology

The presentation below contains a quick introduction to the IPAC assessment methodology, covering its benefits, addressing the perceived barriers for its use, key elements and recommendations, and real data from case studies and literature that shows its suitability.

Guidelines on how to use the IPAC methodology

The IPAC assessment methodology can be run in multiple ways. We have presented here the key points and recommendations.

• Garcia-Souto, M. P., Azma, Y., Grammenos, R., Kador, T., Striolo, C., Whyndham, M., . . . Hughes, G. (2019). . SEFI 47th Annual Conference: Varietas Delectat... Complexity is the New Normality, Proceedings, 1553-1565. SEFI.

Template presentation to explain IPAC to the student

It is good practice to explain the IPAC methodology to the students when you intend to use it in your class. With that aim, we have created in collaboration with some students a power point targeted at students to present the IPAC methodology; it covers the key elements and training. Staff are encouraged to amend, adapt, and modify this presentation and use it in their class. Note that the template contains various conflicting slides, explaining the different ways of calculating the IPAC score and other settings, so the tutor needs to adapt the presentation and remove the options that they are not using before presenting it to the students.

Student Training Presentation v4.ppt (This resource is available within the ‘Resources_for_staff’ folder provided when downloading the software)

To see a full explanation of the structure and information presented in the output files from the IPAC software, please refer to the documentation page “Menu> Data analysis with IPAC software > Output files explained”. To know the different settings options that will determine how the IPAC scores and calculated and what the feedback for each student includes, please refer to the documentation page “Menu > Data analysis with IPAC software > Settings”.

Example data for Moodle questionnaire users

We made available some “example data” that allow staff to test and understand the IPAC software better, how to run the software and the information that it generates. The relevant files are:

• Input files for the IPAC software with “dummy” raw students’ answers. These are 2 files, named (a) Input_Questionaire_file_example_with_swear_words_CSV (This resource is available within the ‘Resources_for_staff’ folder provided when downloading the software); and (b) Input_Group_file_example_CSV (This resource is available within the ‘Example_data’ folder provided when downloading the software). These two files are needed as input to run the IPAC software in the Moodle questionnaire mode. The first file contains the answers given by each student, while the second file has the list of students in each group. Staff can safely practice with/explore the software using these two files. Note that it requires the user to select the option “Settings> Data to process: Moodle Questionnaire by Username”. For further details consult the documentation page Menu > Data analysis with IPAC software > Settings. Note: We have introduced several swear words in this example so staff can see how the IPAC software handles them.
• Example of output files from the IPAC software, when using the input file listed above. Note that these files are only examples. If you run the system with the same input data, the calculated values and student feedback created will change according to the calculation method and other options selected by the tutor on the IPAC software settings page.
  Files:
  • Output_contributions summary: This gives an organized and structured overview of the raw scores, feedback and calculated values for each group. It can be used by the tutor to see what happens in the entire class or more surgically explore particular cases and groups. (This resource is available within the ‘Example_data’ folder provided when downloading the software)
  • Output_scores and comments: This gives a summary of the calculated values, specifically, the average scores that each student obtained for each criteria and the final IPAC score, along with the exact feedback that each student will receive. This feedback might include the average mark obtained for each question or criteria, the comments from their peers, and the personalized tutor feedback. Note that the feedback created for each student will vary depending on the settings selected by the tutor at the time of running the IPAC software. (This resource is available within the ‘Example_data’ folder provided when downloading the software)

To see a full explanation of the structure and information presented in the output files from the IPAC software, please refer to the documentation page “Menu> Data analysis with IPAC software > Output files explained”. To know the different settings options that will determine how the IPAC scores and calculated and what the feedback for each student includes, please refer to the documentation page “Menu > Data analysis with IPAC software > Settings”.

Template for personalised tutor feedback

The IPAC software allows the tutor to create personalized tutor feedback for each student based on their individual scores (the overall IPAC and the average score obtained per criteria) and some pre-defined feedback written on a template. Note that the template needs to be adapted in terms of the number of questions, and the thresholds for the numerical bands, particularly when changing from normalized to percentage IPAC values. This is fully explained in the “Menu > Data analysis with the IPAC software > Automatic personalised tutor feedback”.

Some examples/templates provided to create this personalized tutor feedback are:

• File that runs with example of input data for LTI, with 5 questions and IPAC values given in the normalized scale: File name: band descriptions_6levels_normalized_Template_v3_FIVEQ_CSV
• File that with the example of input data for Moodle questionnaire, with:
  • With normalized IPAC values. File name: band descriptions_normalized_Template_CSV
  • With IPAC values given in percentage. File name: band descriptions_6levels_percentage_Template_CSV

Note: These files are available within the ‘Example_data’ folder provided when downloading the software.

Other resources

• Garcia-Souto, M. D. P. (2020). EDULEARN19 Proceedings. IATED. doi:10.21125/edulearn.2019.1842.
• Garcia-Souto, M. D. P. (2019). INTED2019 Proceedings. IATED. doi:10.21125/inted.2019.2154.
• Grammenos, R., Garcia Souto, M., Chester, I., & Albelda Gimeno, L. (2019). Peer assessment of individual contribution in group work: a student perspective. Proceedings of the SEFI 47th Annual Conference. Varietas delectat... Complexity is the new morality. European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI).