How many assessments should a student take?
It all depends on the type of work to be assessed and how much time you want students to spend on it. After a certain number of assignments, students are no longer motivated to give quality feedback. We recommend between 3 and 5 assignments per student.
Is it better to set up an individual or group assessment?
Both are possible. If you want a certain volume of evaluation per copy, it may be worth asking for individual evaluations. Alternatively, you may decide to ask for a group evaluation to get more qualitative feedback, but less in number.
How can we be sure that student assessments are valid?
This raises the question of the legitimacy of students' ability to produce feedback. But in reality, students can provide feedback that is just as qualitative and quantitative as that provided by the experts - the teachers - and, since they use simpler jargon, closer to colloquial and everyday language, their feedback even facilitates comprehension (Cho, 20067 ; Cho, 20088 ; Cho, 20109).
What weight should be given to student assessment?
Each case is different, but we observe a percentage of the final grade of between 25% and 50%. You can also weight the peer evaluation with other criteria: participation in feedback, quality of feedback given, cross-assessment with intra-assessment...etc.
How do you build an evaluation grid?
The criterion should focus the student's attention on a specific element or skill to be assessed. Ideally, a rating scale should be added to assess the quality of a criterion. This scale is common to all criteria. We recommend using between 3 and 5 degrees of evaluation.
Example: Not acquired, In progress, Acquired, Expert.
Ideally, each degree should be linked to an observable element.
Example:
Criterion: Written expression
Not acquired: More than 10 spelling or syntax errors.
In progress: Up to 10 spelling and syntax errors. Vocabulary is varied.
Acquired: No syntax or spelling errors. Vocabulary is varied.
Too many criteria can be discouraging, and the same mark is then awarded everywhere. 5 criteria seems to be a number that works well with students.
What is the ideal frequency for a peer review?
To encourage a deeper level of engagement, begin the peer review process early in the term so that students have sufficient time to reflect on the feedback they receive and apply it to their learning. through revision or on later assignments. Studies have shown that revisions early in the process focused on substantial content-based changes, while revisions closer to the deadline resulted in finishing changes focused on grammar, word substitution and spelling (Baker 2016; Cho and MacArthur, 2010). In a short 12-week course program, the ideal design will begin peer review activities in week 3.
Like any practical activity, peer-to-peer activities need to be regular and repeated if students are to acquire lasting knowledge. A clear timetable in which teachers define the beginning and end of each activity will help students get organized.
The pedagogical advantages of the method
Involves students in the evaluation process
Students are assessed from kindergarten right through to the end of their higher education. For them, this is a logical process in which they are passive, as it enables them to validate their learning or not. With peer assessment, the student becomes active in the process and takes ownership of it (Brindley & Scoffield, 19982). In this way, assessment becomes a formative element, providing an opportunity to improve on mistakes rather than a punishment for failure. What's more, by judging the work of others, students gain an insight into their own performance through that of their peers. This enables them to understand - or better understand - their mistakes (Brown, Rust & Gibbs, 19943; Zariski, 19964; Race, 19985).
Generate lots of feedback
Questioning student passivity in the assessment process brings us back to a central point: the purpose of an assessment. Assessment can be summative, in order to generate a grade, or formative. In either case, the aim is to generate feedback on a student's production, in order to help him or her progress. However, in the university world, assessment is mainly used for certification purposes, to validate a UE or a diploma. Obviously, the problem lies in the lack of time on the part of teachers, or the sheer number of students involved. But with peer assessment, we transform the evaluation process into a method that generates a large amount of feedback, and we know that the use of feedback is the pedagogical method that leads to the most progress in students (Hattie, 19876).
Skills development
To verify these effects, we can look at the impact of peer assessment on student performance. Peer assessment not only makes learning more sustainable over time, but also increases overall academic performance (Double, 202014; Relatedly & Vickermann, 200915). But it also helps to develop numerous skills. The combined action of evaluative judgment and the production of feedback - typical of peer assessment - enables the method to develop autonomy, confidence in one's abilities, collaboration, communication, team spirit, critical thinking, reflexivity and the ability to learn how to learn (Reinholz, 2016 16; Slavin, 1990 17; Relatedly & Vickermann, 200915). In other words, skills that are all the more important as they are close to the world of work, enabling students trained using peer assessment to be more ready, trained, for the world of work (Boud & Soler, 2016 18; Weaver & Esposto, 2012 19; Kearney, 201320). These skills are what we call soft-skills, i.e. skills focused on attitudes, which are developed all the more when "intra-group" peer assessments are carried out, focusing on work processes and attitudes within groups (Kennedy, 2006 21; Conway, 199322). Intra-group evaluation also has the advantage of reducing the number of free-riders - students who let themselves be carried along and benefit from the work of others in group projects - (Conway, 1993 22; Kench, 200923).
Increased commitment
On the student side, the method is also generally perceived as pedagogically relevant and satisfying, which increases student commitment to the assignments (Elliott, 2005 1; Relatedly & Vickermann, 200915). Finally, peer evaluation fits perfectly into strategies for triangulating methods - a pedagogical program comprising several methods that enrich each other - (Topping, 2003 24; Cho & MacArthur, 20109).
