Peer-assessment: Focus on stimulating good quality feedback

https://twitter.com/Mr_Bunker_edu/status/243793486430732288

Improve the design of peer assessment
Think about one peer-assessment you have organized and Reflect on the following question to see whether you have consciously deal with the aspects that mentioned:

• What is the objective of the peer feedback exercises?

• What needs to be reviewed by peer?

• Which evaluation criteria need to be used when giving feedback?

• How did you group the students? How many reviews did they receive and how many did they have to do themselves?

• What was  the timing? 

o When does the task have be submitted for reviewing? 

o When did they know what to review? 

o How much time was there for reviewing? 

o Was there a time scheduled to process the feedback?

• How did the assignments be collected and divided between the reviewers? How did peer feedback be transmitted to the recipients? Did the students have to organise this by themselves or did the teacher collect and then redistribute the assignments? Or did this be done through an electronic platform?

• How did you lead the feedback session? How did you make sure that students give constructive feedback?

• Did the giving of peer feedback be evaluated? And how did this be done?

By think through aforementioned question, do you recognize certain aspects you could change to make a more thorough design of the  peer-assessment ? Please write your thoughts down.

It is important to properly prepare the students for peer feedback. The list below can be of assistance:

• Clarify why you will use peer feedback and what you expect the students will learn from it.

• Describe how the process will go (e.g. via a timeline) and what you expect and when.

• Establish the evaluation criteria with your students. When it is not possible to do so, make sure the criteria is very well communicated with your students. You can explain them from the beginning of the task, organize an exercise session on how to use these criteria to assess work. It will be idea to do such an exercise together with students at least once on an example.

• Illustrate how peer feedback works, show them how feedback can be formulated based on the criteria. Depict what is considered good or weak feedback, by taking feedback examples from given assignments and linking them to the evaluation criteria. Ask questions that will motivate the recipient of the feedback to better process the work or make the proper suggestions or alternatives.

• Help the students develop their feedback skills. More so, calibrating of the feedback (try-outs, testing of own peer feedback compared to what is expected) can be crucial and can happen through several methods:

o Discuss the evaluation criteria and link them to examples of peer feedback.

o Go over peer feedback examples.

o Ask students to give peer feedback on a group example and have them compare and discuss it in groups.