Successful intra-group peer reviews

Successful peer review

Intra-group peer review?

During an intra-group assessment, students are asked to give constructive feedback to members of their workgroup on their attitudes and investments within the group, so they will be evaluating the famous "soft skills" or behavioral competencies of their peers.

For intra-group peer reviews, 5 questions to ask yourself right from the start.

The 5 Questions of peer review

WHAT?
First and foremost, we need to question the work the students are asked to do. Does it foster collaboration and team spirit? Intra-group assessment is designed to improve group behavior and skills. If the task is not adapted to teamwork, the process will be of little interest.
HOW?
When it comes to evaluation, the key question concerns the scale, the tool used to assess. In the case of peer assessment, the tool used to produce the best evaluations is the criterion-referenced grid. But this is not an absolute truth, and context always takes precedence over theory. So it's important to ask how students are going to evaluate their peers, and whether the tool chosen to do so is the most appropriate for the situation.

WHEN?
The greatest value of peer assessment is that it enables students to take into account feedback from their peers in order to improve. But for this to happen, students must first be given time to see and understand what works and what doesn't in their peers' work practices. In this way, they will be able to carry out quality peer reviews. And then, secondly, you need to leave enough time for the students to internalize the feedback received, so that they can put it into practice. The question of timing is therefore crucial in peer evaluation, which must be adapted to the work required and appear realistic in the eyes of the students.

WHO?
There are a number of different players in an assessment, so it's important to ask who they will be and what roles they will play in the peer review. As a general rule, there will be 3 roles: Evaluators: for the sake of fairness, this role must be assumed by every student. Evaluators: here too, each student must play this role, but a question arises: should students evaluate each member of their groups? To answer this question, we need to take a look at the workload: for a peer evaluation, the ideal is to ask students to evaluate no more than 3-4 of their peers. Finally, the third role is that of the pedagogical advisor: you have to ask yourself what role you're going to play in the process. In fact, peer evaluation will be of the highest quality if the tutor plays the role of facilitator throughout the process, answering questions, questioning progress and organizing debriefing sessions. The more involved the tutor, the more relevant the students will find the process.

WHY?
Finally, we need to ask ourselves why we want to carry out a peer assessment, and what added value it will bring to the exercise. By understanding the issues at stake and the group skills that will be worked on via peer assessment, we can show students how this exercise will help them to progress, which will make them more motivated.

Evaluation idea

Points to bear in mind concrete practices in the service of peer review.

Once these questions have been answered, a number of practices can be put in place to improve peer evaluation.

1

Presentation and demonstration

In order for student evaluations to be of the highest quality, they must master the assessment tools. To achieve this, it's important to present and exemplify their use. For example, you can show them how you would use the criteria grid in a given fictitious fictitious case.

2

Co-construction

Ideally, the criteria should be developed in collaboration with the students, so that they understand them better and identify from the outset the working practices they need to adopt. What's more, with this method, students feel more involved and motivated in peer assessment.

3

Training

It's by practicing athletics that you'll become a good runner. The same the same applies to peer assessment: the more students use the the more enriching it will be. They'll improve with each as evaluators, producing better feedback for their peers. for their peers. So don't hesitate to work in collaboration with your with your colleagues to set up a series of cross-disciplinary peer cross-disciplinary peer reviews.

4

Self-evaluation

Finally, enriching peer evaluation with self-evaluation will enable students to find the process more pedagogically enriching. In addition, self-evaluation enables students to identify their own strengths and weaknesses and to compare one's vision of one's working practices with those of one's peers.

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