Self and peer assessment develops evaluative judgement skills in students, which is a critical skill in the world of work. In particular it helps students to establish an understanding of standards and ability to evaluate their performance and that of others. This can have a transformative impact on employability (Tai & Adachi, 2019).
Self and peer assessment take seriously the matter of design decisions in assessment practices. Giving the power of the assessor to students needs to be carefully considered: the why, what, where, how, and who. A framework for exploring 19 design elements has been developed that teaching teams can use when designing peer assessment (Adachi et al., 2018a). Chie talks about the framework in the video below.
Click here to vide the video transcript
In our 2018 study with the aim to propose a framework for designing, implementing and researching peer assessment, we’ve conducted a synthesis of existing literature around peer assessment. And coupled that with our empirical qualitative data of the interviews with 13 academics who engaged with peer assessment previously. Through this work, we have identified 19 design elements under the six clusters of themes that make up of various types of peer assessment. These 19 elements are by no means exclusive or exhaustive lists, but rather indicate what considerations teachers need to make when designing and implementing peer assessment.
So some elements are inherent to any educational design as a contextual factor, such as subject area like masters of education. And some others are more optional, such as technology use. Overall, this framework works as a guideline in systematically checking, and articulating what elements that you already have in your existing assessment design, or other elements you haven’t thought about yet, but would like to include for your future of peer assessment. You might be surprised that an element such as use of standards or rubric can be missing in the reality of implementing peer assessment but how vital it is to pause and think, if this task given the overall intended learning outcome really needs a clear set of standards for your students to apply.
So we’ve created this framework with a few aims in mind, so that teachers can explain more holistically what peer assessment entails, better understand and implement peer assessment practices, share and communicate their practice of peer assessment. And finally, so that we can also support software developers to design and state what their peer assessment tools afford for both educators and students. So I hope that teachers and researchers can make use of this framework and let us know how it works within your context. We’ve run workshops in the past, with teachers and educational designers alike, and we received positive feedback that they found it useful to deliberately think about those 19 design elements and reflect on their current and future practices while also learning more about the power and benefits of peer assessment for their students.
The ‘Nineteen peer assessment design elements’ table below is from Adachi et al., (2018a: 5-6). A framework for designing, implementing, communicating and researching peer assessment. Higher Education Research and Development, 1-15.
Research into academic perceptions has identified a range of opportunities and challenges found in designing and implementing self and peer assessment (Adachi et al., 2018). Some of the benefits include:
- developing transferrable skills;
- providing authentic assessment – cultivating students who are work-ready and are lifelong learners;
- promoting active learning;
- developing a better understanding of standards and assessment criteria;
- timely, varied, and appropriate feedback for students;
- acquiring the skills involved in giving and receiving feedback;
- reduced input (and time) required of educators.
Implementation of self and peer assessment also comes with its challenges, some of them include:
- the reliability and accuracy of students’ judgement skills;
- perceived expertise of students;
- power relations;
- time and resource constraints.
References:
Discussions
Please share your thoughts and questions in the comments section below.