Used in higher education, peer assessment offers many advantages in terms of both pedagogy and practicality for the teacher. In this article, we'll take a look at the advantages of peer assessment, as well as the best practices to adopt to maximize its effectiveness.
What is peer review?
In a university setting, peer assessment puts students in the position of corrector, asking them to critically assess the work of other students (their peers).
The pedagogy of this assessment method is learner-centered. It can take the form of formative feedback to encourage learning progression and/or summative assessment to certify recognition of learning.
We often hear about peer assessment in MOOCs. The main reason why this practice is so popular in this field is that there are too many students to be graded by a single dedicated teaching team. But behind this first aspect, peer evaluation has many advantages.
If you'd like to see examples of how peer review can be used, take a look at our article on peer review use cases.
Pedagogical advantages and benefits of peer assessment.
Peer review brings many benefits at different levels:
Understanding the subject and understanding the evaluation
If the student tends to concentrate on understanding the subject, peer assessment will enable him/her to position him/herself as a corrector and, consequently, to immerse him/herself in understanding the assessment method. This exercise may lead him or her to adopt a new approach for future assignments.
Developing soft skills
Peer assessment encourages students to take a critical, objective look at the work presented to them. As they are not in a superior position, they will be required to give more details to justify the marks they receive.
When you see the notes and the feedback you've received, you'll have to listen to the critical comments you've made about the work you've done. We offer popular necklaces for women such as pendants, chokers and chain necklaces. Buy jewelry in a variety of metals and gemstones to suit every occasion.
Assimilation is reinforced
According to Dale's cone of learning, we retain 10% of what we read and 70-90% of what we do and explain.
By positioning students as evaluators, they will be asked to explain and justify their grades, reinforcing their understanding of the course in a very natural way.
Optimization of time spent evaluating
While grading a MCQ on a large number of copies is manageable, it's quite a different matter when it comes to grading case studies on an open-ended question. Even if the mark is constructed according to a scale, putting the work in relation to the scale means immersing oneself in the vision of each student. Setting up peer assessment beforehand allows us to see if a consensus emerges on certain criteria, and thus facilitates final grading.
Peer learning
Peer assessment enablespeer learning. Through the various feedbacks exchanged, students benefit from the knowledge and vision of others on their own work, enabling them to learn with a different approach.
How to set up an effective peer review?
Now that we've seen the advantages, let's take a look at the important criteria for maximizing the relevance of this type of evaluation.
Define the number of copies/assignments to be corrected per student
Is your aim to get students to work on their critical thinking skills? Do you want to use this assessment as part of the final grade? Depending on the answers, you'll need to assign one or more assignments to each student. If you want to use student grading as part of the final grade, you'll need to identify consensus on the various aspects of the grading scale. It will then be useful to assign a sufficient number of corrections per student to ensure that this consensus is consistent, while taking care not to discourage the corrector.
Provide an evaluation grid.
It's important not to leave the student-corrector struggling to cope with what he's being asked to do. It is therefore necessary to guide him by providing him with a grid explaining point by point how the mark breaks down and how it should be applied.
To find out more, we recommend this article: Peer evaluation grid: examples and methodology
Make interactions anonymous.
The aim here is for students to concentrate on the discourse and arguments put forward, both for the marker and for the person receiving the mark and comments. Anonymity can be useful to avoid distorting the objectivity of each person's comments.
Set a time to spend on each copy.
To let students know the level of effort you expect of them, you can give an indication of the amount of time each student is expected to spend on a rendering. This will give them a guide as to whether they're doing too much or too little.
Provide qualitative feedback
As we saw at the start of this article, peer evaluation can take the form of formative feedback. This is the whole point of the exercise, since it is thanks to this feedback that students will be able to draw inspiration from the suggestions made by others. It is partly thanks to this feedback that they will be able to take a critical look at their own work.
How do you decide on the results of a peer review?
Results may differ depending on the rendering. To identify differences of opinion between graders, it's a good idea to look at the standard deviations for each of the grading criteria. By identifying these points, the teacher can bring his or her own vision to bear to readjust the grade or clarify a specific point.
For the rest, the consensus is there. The teacher can simply go through them to validate or not the grading of the students and make additional comments if necessary.
It can be difficult to trust students to assign a grade and, above all, to take it into account in the final results. This difficulty in delegating marking is perfectly understandable, for the simple reason that the student is not a "senior" in his or her field. Nevertheless, according to educational researcher Topping K.J., a less competent assessor but one who has more time than the teacher can produce an assessment that is just as reliable as the teacher's(Topping K J Peer assessment Theory into practice, vol. 48 2009).
