Peer Assessment activity guide

Peer assessment is the assessment of students' work by their peers against set assessment criteria.

In general, there are two types of peer assessments:

• Assessment of team contribution in group work - members of a group assess the performance of the peers in terms of their contribution to the group's work.
• Assessment of coursework undertaken by other students - students provide feedback/grades on their peers' work.

In either case, self-assessment may be included as part of peer assessment. Self-assessment requires students to reflect on their own work and judge how well they have performed in relation to the assessment criteria. Developing reflective skills provides students with the ability to consider their own performance and to identify their strengths, weaknesses, and areas that require improvement. Students can then use this knowledge to influence their future work, whether on a programme of study or in employment.

It is crucial that at the outset, students understand the purpose of peer assessment and how their performance will be assessed.

• Peer assessment encourages deep learning. It develops the capacity for students to reflect on and evaluate their own learning and skill development.
• Peer assessment gets students involved and allows them to be an active agent in assessment procedures.
• Peer assessment helps students to develop a clearer understanding of assessment criteria. It enables students to understand what constitutes good work and work towards improvement in future work.
• Peer assessment of team contributions promotes a sense of fairness in group work. As group members themselves know best about the relative contributions of individual members, they are empowered to reward members who contribute significantly or positively to the group work with higher mark. By doing so, students are encouraged to reflect on their role and contribution to the process of the group work.
• By assessing or evaluating each other’s work, students take up the role of appraisers and, over time, acquire the skills they need to make judgements on their own work (Sadler, 2010).
• Peer assessment 'allows students to recognise areas of their strength and weakness as team members (Lerchenfeldt et. al., 2019).
• Peer assessment 'is an effective way for each student to participate actively in a team project'. 'An instructor may not observe all the processes occurring within the student groups. Typically, instructors evaluate the quality of the final product without knowledge of the team work process' (Lee & Lim, 2012).
• Knowing that their contribution will be graded by their peers can help students to contribute effectively to the group effort.

References

• Lee, H.-J., & Lim, C. (2012). Peer Evaluation in Blended Team Project-Based Learning: What Do Students Find Important? Educational Technology & Society, 15 (4), pp.214–224.
• Lerchenfeldt, S., Mi, M. & Eng, M. (2019). The utilization of peer feedback during collaborative learning in undergraduate medical education: a systematic review. BMC Medical Education 19, 321.
• Sadler, D. R. (2010). Beyond feedback: Developing student capability in complex appraisal, Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education