THE PEER ASSESSMENT STRATEGY

Almost all learning institutions have systems in place to get the most out of the students; how

else will they fulfill their dreams? At the University of the People peer assessment is one of

those systems, let me give you my take on it:

Peer assessment is the process in which students grade their fellow student’s assignments and

comment on the requirements and implementations thereof in the assignment. Each student must

peer assess three fellow students’ submissions in the discussion forum on the assignment posted

for the learning week. Peer assessment is a useful tool at University of the People as it opens the

minds of all students.

The benefits of peer assessments can be compared to the value of diamonds and gold. As the

assessor you learn valuable skills like spotting mistakes (grammar and spelling), but also

learning different ways to do the assignments and defining your own responses. Since the start

of my studies at UoPeople, I was able to learn so much more than just reading textbooks or doing

the weekly assignments. Peer assessment not only makes you think outside the box, it also gives

you windows into a lot of other boxes. Peer assessment makes every student a better learner.

The main challenge with giving feedback in peer assessments, I feel, is more of an emotional

one. I, for one, don’t like hurting someone else’s feelings. It’s not always easy to stay on point

and focus on what the grading criteria of the assignment expects. One must learn not to feel

sorry for the fellow student you are giving feedback to, but to rather focus on how they can learn

and improve from your feedback.

When receiving feedback in peer assessments, a different opinion might not always sit well with

you. It’s sometimes very hard to hear (read) that you made a mistake or misunderstood an
instruction. It’s even harder when you got the whole assignment completely wrong and you

must face extremely negative feedback. This also comes back to the emotional side; if you had a

very bad day and you have to read about how bad your assignment was done, it tends to even

upset you further. The key would be to focus on what you learned from the feedback received,

and always try to use the feedback to improve the way you handle assignments.

The strategies I will use to peer assess written assignments is to have a list of the requirements on

hand as a checklist together with the rating guidelines. Reading through the writings first, let’s

me see the topic and flow of the discussion after which I can use the checklist to see if the

assignment was done as required. Only after I’ve seen the whole picture, will I use the rating

guidelines to finalize the assessment. The same will go for discussion assignments, I feel that all

writing must be done according to the assignment guidelines and therefor assessed accordingly.

When all is said and done, peer assessments will help each and every student to grow as a

person. Emotional intelligence will improve and strengthen with every good or bad experience

IF you choose to learn from it!