Dr Paul Denny (Computer Science, University of Auckland) has interests in developing and evaluating technologies for supporting collaborative learning, particularly involving student-generated resources, and exploring ways to motivate students to engage within online learning environments. One of his developments, PeerWise, is a freely available web-based tool that instructors can use to support collaborative student learning across a wide range of disciplines. In November 2018, PeerWise was the "Overall Award" winner and the "ICT Tools for Teaching and Learning" category award winner at the QS Reimagine Education Awards, an event attracting entries from 1200 international projects.

The tools that he has developed have had a wide impact, being used by more than half a million students in 80 countries and helping to form a global community of educational researchers, more than 80 of whom have published their research as a result. To support this community, he has delivered more than 60 invited talks and workshops, focusing on both the practical use of technology in the classroom and approaches for evaluation. He has been recognized for contributions to teaching both nationally and internationally, receiving New Zealand’s National Tertiary Teaching Excellence Award (2009), the Australasian Association for Engineering Education Award for Innovation in Curricula, Learning and Teaching (2009) and the Computing Research and Education Association of Australasia Teaching Award for Outstanding Contributions to Teaching (2010).

Typically, teachers and other subject experts create the learning resources that students use, such as textbooks, lecture notes, assignments and lab activities. There are, however, some advantages in having students create learning materials for their peers. Distributing the work required to generate resources can enable the creation of large repositories of content very quickly. There are also learning benefits associated with students reflecting on, and explaining, their understanding of relevant concepts as they create resources.

A number of interesting research questions arise - how does the quality of resources generated by students compare with those created by experts, how can students be motivated to engage in both creating and using the generated resources, and what evidence exists for the learning benefits of such activities? This talk will present some answers to these questions by drawing upon data from PeerWise, a free platform for student-generated practice questions.

PeerWise hosts over four million multiple-choice questions, created by hundreds of thousands of students, from a wide range of subject areas.