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79 - Peer assessment

from Activities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 June 2018

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Summary

Peer assessment involves learners in the assessment of the work of their peers, i.e. other learners. It is a very powerful and effective approach to assessment, as hearing the views of peers on your performance and/or giving your considered opinion on their work can encourage engagement with both the tasks and the assessment process (knowing your peers will be judging you is an excellent motivator).

Involving learners in the assessment – that is, checking whether the learning outcomes have been achieved – can improve an understanding of both the task and the assessment process. It can also be a good way of validating your session content and design by getting the learners to take more responsibility for their learning outcomes. With information literacy teaching this may be especially important in translating what may seem like quite abstract (and library-owned) knowledge into meaningful and relevant applications. Most of the assessment will be formative and will take place within the session.

These are two of the ways you can use peer assessment:

1 Set a task and then ask for feedback on how the individual or group performed. Rather than you as teacher commenting on the feedback or results of the task, get the group to review their performance within the group.

2 Ask one group to comment and provide feedback to another group. For this to work effectively, the learners need to understand the assessment criteria which in turn should be based on the learning outcomes. Thus, if you ask for comments on a search strategy presented by a group, then you should require the peer assessors to comment specifically on particular elements – the range of keywords, perhaps – rather than general comments. This will require you to ‘publish’ the assessment criteria – a simple sheet of things to look for will suffice. Turn this into a more active group activity with a poster tour (Poster tours). This can work very well in assessing presentations.

✓ BEST FOR

  • • longer sessions

  • • staff development.

  • + MORE

  • • Try this as an online activity by using the comments facility in blogs, wikis or online discussion fora in other online learning environments. Make sure the assessment is anonymous to avoid any destructive comments.

  • Type
    Chapter
    Information
    A Guide to Teaching Information Literacy
    101 Practical Tips
    , pp. 207 - 208
    Publisher: Facet
    Print publication year: 2011

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