Using PeerMark - guidance for staff
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What are the benefits of student peer assessment?
Peer assessment It is well suited to topics withimportant to discuss the rationale for peer assessment with students. A well-conceived peer assessment activity can advance:
- Students' ability to understand and work with assessment criteria.Students' participation in the
- Through formulating constructive feedback which suggests how peers can improve, insights into how they themselves can improve.
- Students' participation in the authentic academic practice of peer review.
- The possibility of feedback that is quicker, more individualised, and more plentiful than tutors are able to provide.
- Avoiding 'learned dependence' (Yorke, 2003) - students' over-reliance on tutor opinions, and humility about their own understandings which may interfere with their development.
- Triangulation - the original submission, peer review reviews and tutor assessment (not to mention self assessment ) triangulate each otherwhere used) can be compared, giving students perspective new perspectives on their work and (if they are permitted to see how other students reviewed the same work they reviewed) on the criteriasubmission, the criteria, and the reviews they have written.
- Relatedly, insights into subjectivity and governance in the assessment process.
- Also relatedly, a departure from monologic, transmissive feedback as students weigh up the differences in the reviews. This in turn promises a desirable change in the way feedback is received from simple certainties to more sophisticated, evaluative thinking (Schommer, 1990)
- Provision of feedback on students' draft work - given sufficient time for amendments before the deadline. (Worried students might take each others' ideas? See below.)
In the light of his research into peer assessment, Keith Topping (2009) suggests explaining to students,
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In the 'Peermark Assignment' tab of the PeerMark Manager you enter basic information about the activity. Title This will appear for students and should be distinctive and descriptive. Point value (required) The marks available for the peer review itself - i.e. not for the reviewed work. This reflects research findings that asking students to assign numeric marks to their peers exacerbates any sense of risk and brings undue complications and pressure to peer review without bringing any particular learning benefits. Instructions to students Brief guidance about what students should do and why. Start date, Due date, Post date NB How do these relate to the Turnitin assignment's dates? Make sure you click the 'Save & Continue' button to proceed to the next tab.
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The 'PeerMark Questions' tab of the PeerMark Manager allows you create the questions you want the peer reviewers to answer. To add a question, click 'Add question' |
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Enter your question text, the question type. There are two types of question you can use; |
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For a 'Free response' question, enter the minimum answer length (this counts words). |
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For a 'Scale' question, enter the scale size and the lowest and highest values |
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You can also use libraries to manage your Peermark questions. Clicking on Library Settings allows you to create and delete libraries, and to save and retrieve questions from those libraries. There is also a 'Sample Library' which you can add pre-made questions from. |
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Distribution
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Please note that after reviewing has started you won't be able to pair students - so do make any allocations in advance. |
In the 'Distribution' tab of the PeerMark Manager you can see all the student accounts associated with this assignment and how they will be allocated reviews. If you want to, this is where you can get involved with who reviews whose work. If you can't see all the accounts you are expecting, click outside of the Peermark Manager to return to your Turnitin assignment page; then click its 'Turnitin Students' tab. From there you can click 'Enrol all students', which will bring in all students 'enrolled' in that Moodle course area. |
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If you need to exempt student from the PeerMark activity, you can exclude them by clicking their adjacent red Minus icon; their name displays greyed-out and they gain a green Plus icon, which you can click if you need to reinstate them. If you want to pair students (so that a particular student is allocated the work of another particular student to review, overriding any other distribution settings) you can do so by clicking the blue Plus icon and then selecting a student to pair with from the dropdown list. Paired students are then required to review the work they are allocated.
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Additional Settings
On the 'Peermark Assignment' tab there is a link for additional settings. Here's some explanation of the less obvious ones. 'Award full points if review is written' If ticked this means tutors will not be able to mark the reviews and a student will need to meet set requirements for every part of the review in order to get the available marks, on an all-or-nothing basis. If unticked, tutors can assign and differentiate marks for each student's review. 'Allow students to view author and reviewer names' If left unticked, you probably need to remind students not to put any identifying information in the title, filename, or body of their work. 'Paper(s) automatically distributed by Peermark' This sets the number of randomly allocated papers each student has to review. 'Papers(s) selected by the student' This sets the number of papers a student can choose to review. Students can review a combination of allocated and selected papers. 'Require self-review' If checked, a student has to review their own paper. It isn't currently possible to select self review only - the number allocated by PeerMark has to be at least one. |
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Sometimes, when switching between tabs, you will see an 'Error, you are not authorised to access this resource' message. Click away from the window and reopen it vis the Peermark manage icon. |
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References
- Bloxham, S., & West, A. (2007). Learning to write in higher education:
- students’ perceptions of an intervention in developing understanding of assessment criteria. Teaching in Higher Education, 12(1), 77–89.
- Cartney, P. (2010). Exploring the use of peer assessment as a vehicle for closing the gap between feedback given and feedback used. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education,
- 35(
- 5),
- 551–564.
- Falchikov, N., & Goldfinch, J. (2000). Student Peer Assessment in Higher Education: A Meta-Analysis Comparing Peer and Teacher Marks. Review of Educational Research, 70(3), 287–322.
- McConlogue, T. (2012). But is it fair? Developing students’ understanding of grading complex written work through peer assessment. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 37(1), 113–123.
- McConlogue, T. (2014). Making judgements: investigating the process of composing and receiving peer feedback. Studies in Higher Education, 1–12.
- Nicol, D., (2007). Peer Evaluation in Assessment Review project. Available from http://www.reap.ac.uk/PEER.aspx
- Nicol, D. (2010). From monologue to dialogue: improving written feedback processes in mass higher education. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 35(5), 501–517.
- Schommer, M. (1990). Effects of beliefs about the nature of knowledge on comprehension. Journal of Educational Psychology, 82(3), 498–504.
- Sorensen, E. (2013). Experiences of using peer assessment in a 4th year design module. Available from: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/teaching-learning/case-studies-news/assessment-feedback/peer-assessment-chemical-engineering
- Topping, K. J. (2009). Peer Assessment. Theory Into Practice, 48(1), 20–27.
- Yorke, M. (2003). Formative assessment in higher education: moves towards theory and the enhancement of pedagogic practice. Higher Education, 45, 477–501.