Can students assess themselves and their peers? : a five year study

This paper highlights the results and conclusions drawn from five year study of embedding formative peer feedback and self and peer assessment in a in a Web Programming module. As an academic, assessment and feedback of a student’s assignment submission offers only one opinion on the work which can limit the student learning experience, whilst peer formative feedback offers the opportunity to provide a greater number of voices expressing their view on a submission. Could this be a solution to providing effective formative feedback? The findings indicate that students can provide constructive feedback to their peers and that this feedback is valued by their peers.

Equally with group based assessments an academic has limited knowledge of an individual’s learning in a group assignment. Therefore could students assess themselves and one another to provide an insight to an individual’s performance and contribution in a group-work, and do students’ perceive this is a fair approach? This paper presents the results of applying such methods of self and peer assessment. In brief, students do perceive it is a fair method of assessing a student performance and contribution to group-work, but unsure as to whether to repeat the experience.