UBC EOSC 114 Natural Disasters

Earth and Ocean Sciences EOSC 114
The Catastrophic Earth - Natural Disasters

PeerWise

Students taking EOSC114 in Spring 2012 will NOT be using Peerwise, please ignore the information below.

PeerWise is an online tool to help you learn about Natural Disasters by enabling you to create your own multiple-choice questions. As each of you contributes questions for each of the the following topic modules (earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides, storms, waves, & meteor impacts), the pool of questions grows. These questions can then be answered and evaluated by you and your peers -- your classmates.

Only students in the 8 AM section of this course (EOSC 114.102) use PeerWise. See more info below.
Students in the 3 PM section (EOSC 114.101) do NOT use PeerWise. You may ignore the info below.

Students using PeerWise are given access to it via special Course ID and Identity codes that they can get in Vista. These codes will be assigned during the 3rd week of term, after the enrollment has stabilized. Once you have your access codes, you can then go to the UBC PeerWise Web Site and register. Don't use your real name when you pick your User Name; you may pick any alias you wish, so long as it is not offensive. You will also use this same web site to contribute questions, and to answer and evaluate the questions of others.

Here is a Guide for Students on using PeerWise in EOSC 114 at UBC. To earn full marks for the PeerWise component of this course, you must do the assignment as listed in the Evaluation link from our Home page.

Recommendations: Create questions for each topic section during the same weeks that you are learning about that topic in class. These questions can be based on lecture material and on readings from the textbook. Answer and evaluate (rate and comment about) questions as you study for the midterm and final exams. But don't wait until the last minute before an exam to try to answer PeerWise questions, because the web site (served from New Zealand) might slow down and stop if too many people try to use it at the same time.

Why are we doing this? Because by creating questions, you become the teacher. You usually learn things better when you need to teach it to someone else. Also, other students often have the same confusion about topics as you, so you can benefit by helping each other.

If you have difficulty using PeerWise, please email or visit the Earth Course Assistance Center (see the Help link).