Aropä is a web-based system which supports peer review activities.
In a peer-review activity, an instructor sets students an assignment. After students have submitted their assignment, they comment on the submissions from other students. Once the review process is complete, students read the comments their peers have made on their own submission.
The Aropä Summary document (May 2018) gives more detailed information about the system's design and use, as well as comments and testemonials from current users.
Aropä is used extensively at the University of Auckland, Glasgow University and Queen's University, Canada.
It is also used world-wide, with regular use at the following institutions:
- Franklin University
- Cyberjaya University College of Medical Sciences
- University of Economics in Bratislava
- Curtin University, Australia
- University of the West of England
- Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia, Madrid
- Washington & Lee University
- Matej Bel University, Slovakia
In the 2020/21 academic year, over 16% of the entire student body of the University of Glasgow used the system to review their peers' work.
Aropä has been used in classes in the following subject areas:
Aropä has been used in classes in the following subject areas:
- Accounting
- Anatomy
- Anthropology
- Business Project Planning
- Chemistry
- Chinese Studies
- Civil Engineering
- Classics
- Clinical Education
- Commercial Law
- Computing
- Engineering
- English Language
- Entrepreneurship
- Film studies
- Geology
- Marine Biology
- Mechanical Engineering
- Media Studies
- Medicine
- Molecular Science
- Occupational Therapy
- Pharmacology
- Physics
- Physiology
- Physiotherapy
- Politics
- Population Health
- Professional Skills
- Project Management
- Public Health
- Research Skills
- Software engineering
- Veterinary Science
We have two publications and a technical report summarising our experiences with Aropä:
- ● Helen Purchase & John Hamer. Peer-Review in Practice (Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, February 2018)
- ● Helen Purchase & John Hamer. Perspectives on Peer-Review (Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, July 2017)
- ● Helen Purchase & John Hamer. Peer-Review in Practice (Technical report, January 2017)
- ● Helen Purchase & John Hamer. Aropä: peer review made easy. (in e-learning Excellence Awards: An Anthology of Case Histories. Academic Conferences and Publishing International Limited, pp.173-184. ISBN 9781911218166, October 2016)
- ● John Hamer, Helen Purchase, Andrew Luxton-Reilly & Paul Denny. A comparison of peer and tutor feedback. (Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, March 2014)
- ● John Hamer, Catherine Kell & Fiona Spence. Peer assessment using Aropä. (in ACE '07 Proceedings of the ninth Australasian conference on Computing education, 66:43-54, January 2007)
- ● Adelopo, I. and Dart, E. (2018) Accounting and finance students' perception of online peer review. In BAFA Accounting Education SIG Conference.
- ● Finlay, C., Tierney, A., McVey, M., and Gray, J. (2012) Online peer review of scientific writing - Aropä. In 5th Annual University of Glasgow Learning and Teaching Conference.
- ● Heavey, K. (2020) Using Aropä Peer-Review Software to Enhance Essay-Writing Skills. Action on Teaching University English Online: A Joint University English/English Association Event.
- ● Huston, E., McVey, M., McCallum, S., Deeley, S., Hau, L. and Finlay, C. (2015) Diverse use of the web-based peer assessment tool, Aropä. Scottish QAA Enhancement Themes Conference.
- ● Jacko, T & Jackova, J. (2017) The use of use Aropä Peer-Review system in the university course Ethics, Corruption and Transparency. DisCo: Open education as a way to a knowledge society. Centre for Higher Education Studies, Prague
- ● MacDonald, D. (2013) Online peer assessment in undergraduate physiotherapy education. Scottish QAA Enhancement Themes Conference.
- ● November, N. (2011) Literacy loops and online groups: promoting writing skills in large undergraduate music classes. Journal of Music History Pedagogy, 2:1, 5-23.
- ● November, N. and Day, K. (2012) Using undergraduates' digital literacy skills to improve their discipline-specific writing: a dialogue. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning, 6:2, article 5.
- ● Patterson, D. (2009) Two peer review systems for summative assessment in a Green Processing engineering course. Conference on Engineering Our Future: Are We up to the Challenge? Engineers Australia, 2281-2295.
- ● Welsh, M. (2014) The impact of a new interactive anatomy curriculum for nursing students. Higher Education Academy STEM Conference. 2014.