What is it?

IPAC is the methodology to assess group work where an element of 'individual peer assessed contribution' is combined with the group mark to provide individual marks. It is used to address concern about the fairness of group assessment, which can consequently damage the student's experience during the module. The aim of this methodology is to provide student's with an individual mark that is based on their contribution, rather than all members getting the same group mark. It is hoped this will promote student engagement and tackle associated problems.

For more details, this page highlights how this works: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/engineering/ipac/help/methodology/methodology.html 

Why use it?

• Fairer marks for individuals
• Encourages students’ engagement and professional behaviour during group work
• Fairer marks for individuals
• Encourages self-reflection
• Welcome by students, leading to less complaints to tutors and less stress
• Students practice giving constructive and professional feedback
• Insightful feedback: Students learn how their contribution is perceived within the group, and can improve accordingly
• Tutors get a better understanding of the group dynamics at their convenience, e.g. start, during and/or end of the project.

In practice, it is very easy to run the IPAC methodology using the IPAC tool available at UCL. For staff, the tool saves lots of admin time, allows customization and is highly transparent. For students, the tool just appears within their Moodle course as any other activity.

Tutors add an IPAC activity to Moodle as you would add others in the standard way. The list of students can be synchronised from Moodle to the IPAC tool.
When the sync user enrolments link is clicked by the tutor (manually), changes in the Moodle course's student enrolment are reflected in IPAC: adding, removing and updating students as required. 

When the sync grades from IPAC link is clicked by the tutor (manually) , changes to the grades in IPAC are reflected in Moodle. Grades for peer assessments completed in the linked IPAC activity are synchronised back into the Moodle Gradebook. 

Who can use it?

Course administrators and tutors can add a link to the IPAC Tool as an external tool to their Moodle courses.

Before I start...

Ensure that you have appropriate access to the Moodle course page and the IPAC Tool. Please check the 'Getting started' guide available at https://www.ucl.ac.uk/engineering/ipac/help/start/start.html.

Create a grouping in your Moodle course with all the “groups” that you want to use such that these can be synchronised with the IPAC activity (guidance on how to create groups and groupings is available at https://wiki.ucl.ac.uk/x/Xx88AQ).

Meeting the baseline

The  UCL e-Learning baseline  suggests the following for orientation :

• 2.2 Explain participation requirements
  • Identify which activities are compulsory and optional

  • Provide an  indicator of effort  (such as timings or page counts) for all compulsory tasks

  • Explain how students are expected to use UCL and external e-learning tools. This  PowerPoint Induction template  provides a starting point. Wholly online courses might provide this information as a screen-cast video, with a voice over

  • Link to  instructions  for any e-learning tools that students are expected to use.

 For  student active  participation  it is suggested that:

• 9.1 Students are encouraged and supported to work with learning resources
  Student should be encouraged to investigate, share or discuss through quizzes, simulations, forums, blogs, wikis, glossaries, or databases.

How do I set one up?  

1. Adding the IPAC Tool as an external tool to your course:

• Navigate to your Moodle course and  Turn editing on  
• Select Add an activity  
• Select  External Tool from the list
• Enter an Activity Name of your choice  
• Select the preconfigured 'IPAC' from the drop-down menu 

• Click on Save and return to course.

2. Creating the IPAC questionnaire form

• Define the questionnaire and marking criteria used for the peer assessment of the students.
• Please see the full process on the video, or the step-by-step instructions available at https://www.ucl.ac.uk/engineering/ipac/help/LTI/2_form/LTI_form.html.

3. Set-up student groups

• Create your groups on Moodle, and add them to a Grouping (guidance on how to create groups and groupings is available at https://wiki.ucl.ac.uk/x/Xx88AQ).
• Then, map these groups from your Moodle course to the IPAC tool.
• You will need to run this synchronisation manually every time your Moodle student list changes.
• Please see the full process on the video, or the step-by-step instructions available at https://www.ucl.ac.uk/engineering/ipac/help/LTI/3_group/group.html.

4. Release IPAC questionnaire form

• Release the questionnaire when desired.
• Please see step-by-step instructions available at https://www.ucl.ac.uk/engineering/ipac/help/LTI/4_release/release.html.

5. Synchronising students' grades 

• This will synchronise all grades and feedback within a mapped course from the IPAC tool to Moodle gradebook.
• This is an optional step. Alternatively, the grades and feedback can be made available via the IPAC tool.
• Please see the full process on the video, or the step-by-step instructions available at https://www.ucl.ac.uk/engineering/ipac/help/results/results.html.

Accessibility

Only basic accessibility checks have been carried on, with no critical findings.
Full accessibility check will be performed and any issues found will be highlighted here. In the meantime, if you encounter any accessibility issues with this tool, please report them to IPACsupport@ucl.ac.uk.

Questions & answers  

For frequently asked questions, please check the IPAC documentation FQAs at https://www.ucl.ac.uk/engineering/ipac/help/FQA/FQA.html.

Further information  

This guide was partly adapted from the IPAC documentation, which contains full details and training videos about the IPAC methodology and IPAC tool.

Please visit https://www.ucl.ac.uk/engineering/ipac/help/index.html for further information.