To help you understand what, why, and when to use peer assessment.
Peer assessment is a process whereby students assess their peers or themselves using a benchmark or a marking criterion. This will not only save time for the teacher, help students improve their understanding of a topic and it will also help students prepare for their summative assessments. Peer assessment is often formative assessment. It is much harder to organise peer assessment summatively.
Why do we use peer assessments?
- Empower students to take ownership of their learning.
- Encourage students to provide constructive feedback to their peers.
- Motivate students to engage in their learning and their course materials more deeply.
- Allow students to have an opportunity to provide feedback to each other.
When do you use peer assessments?
- Identify the right assessment that will give students opportunity to provide effective feedback to their peers.
- When your students are ready to provide critical feedback to their peers.
- Use formative assessment as a basis for peer evaluation to allow robust discussions to take place.
- Peer assessment can also work well with group work. Students know who in their group does and doesn’t pull their weight!
Hints and Tips
- Select the assessments or activities for which the students will benefit from provide peer assessment.
- Design a good rubric to give students to assess each other.
- Make sure you create safe space for students to peer evaluate each other without criticising each other.
- Be careful! Students can use peer evaluation to attack their peers.
- Have rules for students to follow when they peer evaluate and always be involved to ensure that a robust discussion is taking place while they peer evaluate.