How reality bites: the production of Australian soap operas

Michael Sergi et al. — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 19:53:34 PDT

Soap opera in Australia is driven artistically by the bottom line, according to Peter Dodds, the producer of the archetypal Australian soap Neighbours, and to Michael Sergi, a freelance director and academic. The meaning of any particular episode is best understood as being filtered by constraints governing production and direction. The specific production and direction processes illuminate much debate about soaps.

Evaluating short-term and long-term peer assessment of student teamwork

Michael Sergi — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 19:29:12 PDT

The lack of individual reward for individual effort is a major concern for many university film and video students undertaking group-based projects. Peer assessment is often used to derive individual marks for group projects, and because it goes some way towards mimicking professional practice. However, if there is only one group project that is part of a subject's assessable work, any mismatch of students, in terms of skills, commitment and personality, can result in some students receiving an undeservedly harsh assessment from their peers, which can affect their final grade. Long-term peer assessment, where students undertake several small group projects in a semester, each with a different set of students, has been shown to be a useful instrument for deriving a more moderated peer assessment mark, not least because it acts to counteract the potential pitfalls of mismatched students.