SWoRD INSTRUCTOR/TA FAQ
What are students going to do
with SWoRD?
What am I going to do with SWoRD?
How does SWoRD Grade Students'
Writing and Reviewing Assignments?
What does SWoRD Technical Support
do to support your class?
What do I need to emphasize to students
about SWoRD?
How do I create my SWoRD account?
How do I create my SWoRD class?
How do I set up assignment topics for
writing and reviewing?
How do I access student registration
information?
How do I access student writing,
reviewing, and back-reviewing activities?
How do I send announcements to
students?
How do I access and download students'
grades?
Writing skills are critical across disciplines for academic and professional success. For students to develop effective writing skills, they need to write papers, get feedback on them, revise them, and get feedback on revised papers. Through these processes, students can improve writing skills and domain-specific knowledge. However, students are losing writing opportunities because of instructorÕs workload in reading and giving feedback.
To remedy this adverse situation, SWoRD, a web-based system, has been developed to manage all of these related facets. SWoRD is a reciprocal peer review system that considers that all students do not generate accurate evaluation and feedback, especially because they are novices in their disciplines. SWoRD has developed its unique computational algorithm to estimate each individual reviewer's accuracy. Along with this measure, back-reviews by authors who get peer reviewersÕ feedback are used.
Read the Instructor Manual for further information.
In SWoRD, each student plays two roles anonymously, one as writer and one as reviewer. The students do not know who writes the papers they are reviewing and who reviews their papers. Individual students will participate in the following SWoRD process for each assignment.
For their writing assignment, they write and submit a first draft. A set of peers review the first draft, and the writers get their feedback. Then the students submit a final draft, which is a revision of their paper that takes into account the feedback they received. The students also back-review or evaluate the reviewersÕ feedback on how much it was helpful in revising their paper. The same set of peers review the final draft and provide comments on the changes made. Finally, the students back-review the reviewersÕ feedback.
For their reviewing assignment, they review a number of authors' first and final drafts. The number of authors' drafts the students are going to review is decided by the instructor. As a rule of thumb, it is around 5 drafts. When reviewing, the students provide written comments on how to improve drafts and grade the quality of each draft. The accuracy of their grading is evaluated and weighted by SWoRD, which is used for a portion of their reviewing grade. In addition, the authors evaluate the reviewersÕ written comments for helpfulness, which also influences a portion of their reviewing grade.
In SWoRD, you as an instructor need to create your class after you create your account. Then set assignment topics for students' writing and reviewing. In addition, you also want to set how many papers in each version of drafts an individual student reviews, etc. You will also want to create a clear description of the writing assignment---make sure it includes a clear description of the evaluation dimensions. That is it.
While the SWoRD process is going on, it is usually a good
idea to remind students of the importance of writing and reviewing, perhaps at
the beginning and end of the class before an upcoming deadline.
First, SWoRD examines and weighs each reviewer's evaluations through its own unique algorithm. This is used for grading each review activity. Also, this measure is used for computing each writer's writing quality. It helps writers from being penalized by unqualified reviewers.
Reviewing Grades. SWoRD evaluates the reliabilities of your ratings in terms of systemic differences, consistency, spread, and helpfulness. The reliability scores are summed, explaining 50% of review grades in each draft. The other 50% is helpfulness from the authors' evaluation.
Writing grades. SWoRD weighs each peer rating based on the reviewer's grading reliability. First and second drafts are weighed equally.
All SWoRD grades are curved, with a mean of 80 and a standard deviation of 10. Instructors are allowed to set their own curving criteria.
For the mean, I would pick the mean final class grade the last time you gave this class, unless you have some belief about why the writing grades should be higher or lower than the grades generated from the other activities. That way you are not radically changing the grades associated with the course as a result of using SWoRD.
For the standard deviation, I usually pick 10%, which means that about two thirds of the students' SWoRD grades will be roughly the mean letter grades (a B and C in my classes).
Provides technical support to end-users with the use of
SWoRD to ensure effective use of it.
We do not carry out functions that users have the capacity
to perform themselves, make allowances for users who donÕt follow instructions
and donÕt communicate problems directly, make adjustments to the system that
require changes at the database level, or make changes to the interface that go
beyond the stated uses of the system.
We welcome suggestions for improvement.
NO Late Assignments will be accepted (past the grace
period). Students should be
PUNCTUAL to the SECOND. SWoRD is
time-sensitive. It means that
students cannot submit assignments even one second after each deadline. Because
of this critical feature of the system, we highly recommend a day grace period
and emphasizing to students that the grace period is there to deal with
unexpected mishaps on their part. Technical failure on the student end is NOT
accepted for their late submission.
NO final drafts without a first draft. Students who miss the first drafts
CANNOT submit final drafts. Thus,
they lose all writing points.
Latecomers can only choose topics that are left (if students
are asked to choose a subset among multiple possible writing topics). When students choose topics for writing
and reviewing, some students who choose late could have fewer choices regulated
by SWoRD. SWoRD tries to assign similar number of students across topics and so
regulates choices with those latecomers.
NO Plagiarism. Students caught copying feedback directly
from another source, or other forms of plagiarism will be dealt with.
The first thing to do is to create your account.
Go to the main SWoRD web page (http://ladybug.lrdc.pitt.edu/sword3).
At the main page, click on ÒCreate New AccountÓ.
Step 1. Agreement Statement:
This will take you to the agreement page that describes the agreement you are making to participate and use SWoRD.
Read the policy carefully.
Check the box that says ÒCheck only if you agreeÓ.
Click the ÒAgree/RegisterÓ button.
Step 2. SWoRD Tech Support Policy Statement
This will take you to the tech support policy page that describes what help tech support can and cannot provide.
Read the policy carefully.
Check the box that says ÒCheck only if you agreeÓ.
Click the ÒAgree/RegisterÓ button.
Step 3. New Account:
The registration page will appear. This page allows you to create a password that you will use each time you log onto SWoRD.
Fill in your information that will register you in the system.
Click the arrow to finish with registration.
Step 4. Creating a pseudonym:
Choose a pseudonym to be identified with and type in the space provided.
Then click ÒAvailable?Ó.
The system will inform you if the name is already taken, so you may have to try another name.
If your pseudonym is available, an arrow will appear.
Click the arrow to proceed.
Step 5. Confirmation:
After you received confirmation that your account has been successfully completed, you will need to enroll in a course.
Click on the arrow to enroll in a course.
Fill out the information for your class.
Now you need to wait for a confirmation e-mail saying that
the course has been added. A SWoRD
administrator will contact you to activate the course. Once the course is
activated, log back on to SWoRD to set up your course.
Once you get your class set-up confirmation email, log back
on to SWoRD to set up your course.
Fill in the information for each topic that you want.
Click ÒADD this topicÓ after youÕve entered all the details for the topic.
Click ÒGo to Next StepÓ when all topics have been entered. Make sure to add all the topics that you want because you canÕt add more once this process is finalized.
Finally, you need to set your assignment.
Click ÒSetupÓ to save what you have set for your course. Please note that your course assignments are NOT available for students.
Click ÒFinalizeÓ to make your assignments available for students. Once you finalize your assignments, you might not be allowed to change some of your assignments.
Once you sign-in to SWoRD, you will be directed to the My
Classes page. Here you can select
your class to access the Roster tab.
Once you sign-in to SWoRD, the Assignments tab is the default page when you first sign-in to your class.
You are also able to see the status of the writing and reviewing assignments by clicking on the ÒWritingÓ and ÒReviewingÓ buttons. You can see who completed the assignment and view their work by clicking on the links.
Once you sign-in to SWoRD, you will be directed to the My
Classes page. Here you can select
your class to access the Announcements tab. Your announcement will be emailed
to students and also posted to their SWoRD course pages.
Once you sign-in to SWoRD, you will be directed to the My Classes page. Here you can select your class to access the Grades tab. This tab brings you to a list of your students with their grades broken down by writing assignments, reviewing assignments, and total. Tasks not yet completed are treated as zeros.
You are able to sort the grades. Click a title of the table.
You are able to download the grades to Excel.
Choose which assignment you want to download (writing or reviewing).
Click ÒExportÓ.
You are also able to curve your grades after all the assignments have been completed.
Enter a mean and standard deviation.
Click ÒDo itÓ.
For Technical Support contact the SWoRD Support Team at
sword@pitt.edu.