Unit 3: Peer-assessment

Objectives for Unit 3

Understand the definition of peer-assessment

Integrate peer-assessment in instruction

What is peer-assessment?

Peer-assessment is “an arrangement for learners to consider and specify the level, value, or quality of a product or performance of other equal-status learners” (Topping, 2010, p. 62). It is also considered a formative process. Topping (2010) claimed “peer assessment is an effective but underutilized type of formative assessment” which “helps gather information for adapting teaching and learning to the current functioning and future needs of students” (p. 62). In higher education, studies showed more than 70% peer-assessment is reliable and valid, and students have more time to utter elaborate assessment which is equally reliable and valid as a teacher does (Topping, 2010). Many researches have been done in various areas and under different context. They all showed evidence to support the effectiveness of peer-assessment. The use of self- and peer-assessment not only helps teachers to manage their time more effectively, but also give a chance to students to grade each other’s works and as a result, students become more autonomous, responsible and involved. Brown, Rust and Gibbs (1994), Zariski (1996), Race (1998) and others have described some potential advantages of peer assessment for students as

giving a sense of ownership of the assessment process, improving motivation
encouraging students to take responsibility for their own learning, developing them as autonomous learners
treating assessment as part of learning, so that mistakes are opportunities rather than failures
practising the transferable skills needed for life-long learning, especially evaluation skills
using external evaluation to provide a model for internal self-assessment of a student's own learning (metacognition), and
Helps clarify assessment criteria.
Gives students a wider range of feedback.

How to integrate peer-assessment in instruction?

This video well exemplifies a typical model of peer-assessment. Peer-assessment

What have you seen from the video? Try to list the processes of peer-assessment in order. What do you find is indispensable?

The criteria or rubrics and the opportunity to revise. When you design a peer-assessment, please do make sure that you have integrated these two elements.

Here are some more strategies for the design of peer-assessment:

• Encourage learners to listen to other people’s responses to questions and presentations made in class, and to ask questions on points that they do not understand.

• Use examples of work from anonymous learners and ask their peers to suggest possible ways of improving the work and how they would meet the learning outcomes.

• Ask learners to use the expected outcome to comment on strengths of each other's work and to identify areas for improvement.

• Ask learners to mark each other's work but do not give them the answers. Instead, ask them to find the correct answers from available resources.

• Ask learners to write their own questions on a topic to match the expected learning outcomes and, in addition, to provide answers to others' questions.

• Ask learners, in groups, to write five questions and, following whole-class discussion, select the two best questions from each group. Then ask learners to answer all the selected questions for homework.

• Ask learners to analyse mark schemes and devise their own for a specified task.

• Ask learners to decide whether they think an answer is reasonable, whether they can add to the answer, or whether they would have given another answer.

• Encourage learners to develop assessment criteria for periodic assessment tasks.

• Ask learners for their level of confidence about a particular piece of work.

Self-reflection

Think about which learning performance can be assessed by peer-assessment. The design will start in next unit after the discussion of self-assessment.