A
Collaborative Learning
Task A (5 mins)
Based on the survey, “How collaborative is your classroom?”, can you please discuss if they are
the criteria for active classroom learning?
Task B (10 mins)
Please come up three activities that can fulfill one or some of the criteria.
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Students actively solve problems and contribute to discussions.
Students must be prepared to actively contribute and as a result there are high expectations
for preparation.
Students must participate in a very public forum.
Students must take risks.
Attendance is mandated by membership in the group.
Students collaborate.
Students learn interdependently.
Responsibilities are determined by the membership in a community.
Identity is determined through membership in a group.
In addition to the textbook and the teacher, students see themselves and their peers as
sources of information & knowledge.
Students focus on relevant, complex, meaningful and authentic problems.
The learner assesses the whole and utilizes personal knowledge and experience to
experiment, interpret and manipulate, modify, test and revise variables of the problem.
Skills such as problem-solving are learned in context.
The process of thinking is the most important.
Students evaluate, decide and are responsible for their own learning.
Content is learned in context.
Students are responsible for their own learning and constantly self-evaluate.
Task C (10 mins)
Peer assessment is the assessment of students’ performance, or their work , by other students.
Which of the following benefits would encourage you as a teacher to consider using?
 Increasing the sense of involvement and ownership of the assessment process, which can
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improve their motivation and understanding of the assessment process.
When students leave university they will need to be autonomous learners and be able to
judge the quality of their own work for themselves - peer assessing helps them become
more critical of their own work.
Linking assessment and learning more closely together so that students are encouraged to
monitor the successes and weaknesses in their learning and are more able to engage in a
discussion about the quality of their work with tutors.
Practising the key skills of evaluation and judgment together with the advanced
communication skills needed to give constructive feedback.
To deepen learning.
If time allows, please select at least three tips which should be incorporate in the peer assessment
practices.
 Invest time in preparing students for the role of assessor.
 Have very clear assessment criteria
 Students need practice in assessing
 use double anonymous marking
 offer to re-mark or sample mark students' work if they are unhappy with a peer
assessment
 check the regulations that govern assessment for courses in your department and as you
will be taking full responsibility for the scores and need to be assured that they are fair,
valid and reliable.
 do moderate, sample and check student marking or simply use the peer assessment
information to aid their own assessment.
 consult with the examiner or external examiner for your programme
Peer assessment
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Why do this?
But what are the difficulties?
Hints, tips and suggestions.
Further information.
A significant development in recent years has been the increased use of peer assessment in the UK. Peer assessment
is the assessment of students, or their work, by other students. This process is being used both as a formative
assessment method (to provide helpful and developmental feedback to peers) and, in fewer cases, summatively (to
contribute to or inform the mark or grade that is awarded).
1. Why do this?
It is argued that the benefits of involving students in the assessment are many and include:
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Increasing the sense of involvement and ownership of the assessment process, which can improve their
motivation and understanding of the assessment process.
When students leave university they will need to be autonomous learners and be able to judge the quality of
their own work for themselves - peer assessing helps them become more critical of their own work (also
see the briefing paper on self assessment - developing reflection).
Linking assessment and learning more closely together so that students are encouraged to monitor the
successes and weaknesses in their learning and are more able to engage in a discussion about the quality of
their work with tutors.
Practising the key skills of evaluation and judgement together with the advanced communication skills
needed to give constructive feedback.
To deepen learning.
In short, peer assessment is a way of assessing the output, or product, of student learning but it can also be seen as a
process of learning in its own right.
In some cases concerns about staff work load or worsening staff to student ratios have led to academics considering
the introduction of peer assessment, although many who have implemented this approach report that workload isn't
significantly reduced but ‘changed'. Staff need to spend time training students and explaining how peer assessment
works, overseeing the process for fairness and reliability and then moderating and addressing student questions and
concerns, rather than doing the assessment themselves.
A very powerful argument for the introduction of some peer assessment is to increase the amount of feedback
students can be given and to ensure that they better understand the feedback that they get. For example, asking
students to swap and read each others' essays and give some verbal or written feedback on, say, two points to
improve and two points to keep the same (giving a balance between positive and negative comments) can provide
quick feedback; but more importantly, it puts the students into the mindset of an assessor. It does appear that this
perspective carries back to their own work where they see, more clearly, the quality of their own work.
2. But what are the difficulties?
Are the students marking reliably?
Whether students are marking fairly and consistently is a very big concern, particularly if the marks are counting as
summative grades. It is clear that marker reliability can be improved by:
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Ensuring the students have clear guidance and a chance to practise.
Using a marking sheet which describes clear assessment criteria.
Asking the student assessors to provide evidence to support their judgements.
Providing, if possible, anonymity in the assessment process so students don't know whose work they are
marking (clearly not possible when peer assessment is used in the assessment of oral presentations or group
work).
Building in double marking or tutor monitoring (sampling) of assessment.
(There have been many studies comparing the reliability of peer assessment with tutor assessment and the picture
remains somewhat unclear. Some studies show students mark consistently with tutors but higher, some that they
mark consistently but lower and some that they are in harmony -the situation is clearly context-dependent (see
Stephen Bostock's review article given in the ‘Further Information' for more detail about this research.)
"It's not our job, teachers should assess!"
An important aspect to consider when introducing peer assessment is persuading the students that this is an
appropriate and fair method to use. If they are not given a convincing rationale they will assume it is to reduce the
workload of staff. It is, therefore, crucial that the students are themselves convinced of the benefits and this may
involve considerable effort on the part of the tutor. This is not the easy option for staff and is likely to require more
up-front preparation that simply doing the assessment yourself.
"How do I criticise my friend ?"
Learning how to give useful and sensitive feedback is a skill that students need to develop for formative peer
assessment to be effective. It is, therefore, very helpful to provide students with some basic guidance that might
include the following:
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Ask the student who is being assessed to comment on their own performance first.
Identify the strengths of the work first, before moving on to areas of weakness or development.
Try to describe what your observe rather than interpreting or evaluating it - some talk about trying to be
a friendly mirror.
Give feedback based on specific behaviour/examples rather than giving a general impression - for both
positive and critical comments.
Back up comments with evidence or examples if possible.
Think about how the feedback is going to be heard and try and give it sensitively and tactfully.
Focus on things that the assessed student can actually address.
A very common use of peer assessment is to involve the audience of students in giving constructive feedback to
students giving a presentation - this might be part of a seminar programme or when students are presenting their
project or dissertation work. (See the pages on Assessing Oral Presentations for further detail about how this could
be accomplished through the use of clear marking sheets and descriptive assessment criteria.)
3. Hints, tips and suggestions
Invest time in preparing students for the role of assessor is a top tip. If the students knowwhy they are assessing and
feel confident in what they are trying to do then the tutor's work in sorting out complaints and unhappiness will be
greatly reduced.
Have very clear assessment criteria. This is easier said than done, but a great way to do this is to involve the
students in negotiating the criteria themselves. If the students are involved in designing the mark sheet they will
better understand the subtleties of the descriptions and mark more consistently. One way of doing this is to have a
preliminary exercise in which the students are given an anonymised example of student work (one from last year?)
and together, asked to come up with a list of assessment criteria to judge it. Then ask them to use their designed
mark sheets to assess the example work and compare their results. Doing this prior to ‘real marking' will allow them
to practise key skills, question their approach and increase their confidence in carrying out assessment for each other.
Students need practice in assessing; those who start assessing each other early on in their degree course can become
very proficient at both peer and self-assessment.
If using peer assessment to mark written work use double anonymous marking, so that students don't actually know
whose work they are assessing, and two markers assess each piece of work. This strategy cuts down on
opportunities for bias and recriminations. Marks can be averaged across the two (or more) markers.
You should offer to re-mark or sample mark students' work if they are unhappy with a peer assessment - it is usual
to find that this ‘safety net' is in fact rarely used but it can provide students with confidence and reassurance.
If you wish to include some form of summative peer assessment in your assessment strategy for students you must
check the regulations that govern assessment for courses in your institution (as details do differ). However, when
you submit the assessment results for your module or course to the examination board you will be taking full
responsibility for them and need to be assured that they are fair, valid and reliable. Many academics, therefore, do
moderate, sample and check student marking or simply use the peer assessment information to aid their own
assessment.
When introducing summative peer assessment (for the first time in a course or module) it is a very good idea to
consult with the external examiner for your programme. Views do differ and working with the external examiner, to
find out what they feel they would need to be shown to be assured of the quality of the assessment process, at the
planning stage can save upset and time.
4. Further information
Brown, G.; Bull, J. and Pendlebury, M., 1997. Assessing Student Learning in Higher
Education. London: Routledge. See chapter 11 - Peer- and Self- Assessment. (A well respected text that gives an
intelligent discussion of the pros and cons of involving students in the assessment process.)
Student Peer Assessment - Stephen Bostock. Keele University's Learning Technology web pages. (A review article
that cites much of the background research literature on peer assessment.)
Brown, S., Rust, C. and Gibbs, G., 1994. Involving students in the assessment process, in Strategies for
Diversifying Assessments in Higher Education, Oxford: Oxford Centre for Staff Development, and
at DeLiberations (A provocative and stimulating text that challenges the reader to check their assumptions and
consider alternatives in assessment.)
Source: http://www.internationalstaff.org/peer_assessment.php