Peer Assessment Approach Research Articles

Promoting students' creative self-efficacy, critical thinking and learning performance: An online interactive peer assessment approach guided by constructivist theory in maker activities

Peer assessment is acknowledged as a potent strategy that motivates students to engage in reflection and comparison through the evaluation of their peers' work. However, the effectiveness of peer assessment is not always satisfactory due to a number of factors, such as lack of in-depth understanding of peers' work and insufficient motivation for the behavior of evaluation. Based on constructivist theory, this study proposed an Understanding-Evaluation-Backward Evaluation-Reflection based peer assessment (UEBR-PA) approach, which directs students to comprehensively grasp their peers' projects, undertake efficient evaluations, provide retrospective reviews on others' feedback, and ultimately, integrate this collective feedback to refine and enhance their own projects. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, a quasi-experiment was conducted in an Open-Source Hardware Project Design course with 54 university students from two classes. One class was assigned as the experimental group to conduct the peer assessment using the proposed approach, while the other class was assigned as the control group to conduct the peer assessment using the conventional presentation-evaluation-communication based approach. The results of the study indicated that the UEBR-PA approach significantly increased students' creative self-efficacy, critical thinking tendency, and learning performance. Furthermore, students engaging with the UEBR-PA approach showcased more positive interactive assessment behaviors.

Tools for self- or peer-assessment of interprofessional competencies of healthcare students: a scoping review.

Healthcare professionals are expected to demonstrate competence in the effective management of chronic disease and long-term health and rehabilitation needs. Care provided by groups of collaborating professionals is currently well recognized as a more effective way to support people living with these conditions than routine, single-profession clinical encounters. Clinical learning contexts provide hands-on opportunities to develop the interprofessional competencies essential for health professional students in training; however, suitable assessment tools are needed to support student attainment of interprofessional competencies with self-assessment espoused as an important component of learning. A structured approach was taken to locate and review existing tools used for the self-assessment and peer assessment of students' competencies relevant to interprofessional practice. A range of self- and/or peer assessment approaches are available, including formally structured tools and less structured processes inclusive of focus groups and reflection. The identified tools will usefully inform discussion regarding interprofessional competency self- and peer assessment options by healthcare students participating in a broad range of clinical learning contexts. Self- and/or peer assessment is a useful approach for those seeking to effectively enhance interprofessional learning and measure the attainment of related competencies.

Interactive equality in peer assessment: The impacts on preservice teachers’ technology-enhanced learning design and feedback uptake

To address the limitation of lacking interactivity in conventional peer assessment, this study proposed an interactive peer assessment approach and examined its effectiveness in an undergraduate course for preservice teachers (PSTs). Seventy-two PSTs were randomly assigned to the interactive or conventional group. The results indicated that the interactive group outperformed the conventional group with regard to technology-enhanced learning design skills, feedback quality and feedback uptake. Furthermore, feedback uptake was identified as a mediating factor to the effectiveness of the interactive approach. The study advocates for the integration of an interactive peer assessment approach into future online teacher educational settings.

An online progressive peer assessment approach to project-based learning: a constructivist perspective

An online progressive peer assessment approach to project-based learning: a constructivist perspective

Peer assessment approach to promote clinical communication skills in a blended learning course of early clinical exposure

Background: Blended learning offers opportunities for the complexity of learning in clinical education. Student peer assessment is widely used as a form of formative assessment in early clinical exposure programs, especially clinical communication skills training. This study aimed to describe clinical communication skills competencies of second-year students and to identify the relationships between peer and faculty assessment of communication skills in a blended learning program format. Methods: A total of 474 second-year general medical students and dental students participated in the study. Peer and lecturer assessment forms with a 5-point Likert scale according to the Calgary-Cambridge guide format were used to evaluate students’ performance of basic communication skills, relationship building, and history taking. Pearson’s correlation coefficients and paired t-test were applied. A p-value < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: Most of students were rated at distinction level (score at 7-8.4) in communication skills. Mean of the overall score by peer and faculty assessment were 7.46 ± 1.03 and 7.17 ± 0.68, respectively. Peers rarely provided negative ratings on subcategories of communication skills. Skills of understanding the patient’s perspectives and gathering information were the most reported skills needed to improve among students. Significant positive correlations were found between peer and faculty evaluations for building relationship, establishing initial rapport, and gathering information domains (p < 0.01). Students tended to grade their colleagues higher for building relationship (3.88 ± 0.62) and establishing initial rapport domains (3.72 ± 0.61) than other domains, meanwhile, teachers tended to grade building relationship (3.80 ± 0.55) and gathering information domains (3.64 ± 0.38) higher than other domains. Conclusion: The findings suggest that student peer evaluation can be valuable for clinical education. As part of a formative assessment, it can be also used for faculty to evaluate students’ clinical communication skills performance in innovative medical education programs. Key words: peer assessment, clinical communication skills, practice of medicine, early clinical practice, blended learning.

A WSQ-based mobile peer assessment approach to enhancing university students’ vocal music skills and learning perceptions

Peer assessment has been regarded as an effective learning strategy in art education, such as in music, dance and art design. For music education, technology-supported peer assessment makes it easier for learners to reflect on their learning performance. However, the process of reflection needs solid and systematic theoretical knowledge. In terms of vocal music, which develops students’ singing skills, it is difficult for learners to compare their own works with those of others because of a lack of sufficient theoretical knowledge. Therefore, a WSQ (watch-summary-question)-based mobile peer assessment approach was used to help learners reflect based on their theoretical knowledge with the support of WSQ learning sheets. To investigate the effectiveness of the approach, an experiment was carried out in a Chinese university. The experimental group (N = 22) learned with the WSQ approach, whereas the control group (N = 22) adopted a mobile peer assessment approach without WSQ. Vocal music skills, learning attitude and learning motivation were assessed. The experimental results indicate that the approach effectively enhanced the students’ vocal music skills but did not improve their learning motivation or attitude. In addition, a higher correlation between teacher scoring and peer scoring was found for the experimental group.
 Implications for practice or policy:
 
 Technology has a great potential in supporting art education and integrating technology into vocal music education should follow the rules of music education.
 Developing students’ reflective thinking skills in vocal music education is challenging, but attainable; it needs considered instructional design and sustained efforts from students.

The Application of Solo Taxonomy in Writing Module Based on Self and Peer Assessment for Primary Level in Malaysia: A Pilot Study

Students need to know their current levels of thinking and how to progress to the next level by self-assess themselves. Otherwise, they would constantly demand teachers to spoon-feed them to achieve a specific level. This is due to the students’ failure to master the lower order thinking skills level that hinder them from making systematic and strategic progress in their learning. The aim of this study was to evaluate a feedback of writing module based on SOLO taxonomy which apply self and peer assessment in their construction of writing development. To test the reliability of the module, a pilot study for the implementation of the module was conducted with the help of the English Language teacher who teach the remedial class in the selected school. The purpose of this pilot study is for ensuring the suitability of the module in terms of time allocation, clarity of instruction, suitability distribution of sub modules and organized activities. A total of 30 Year 5 low achiever learners (LAL) in a primary school have been selected for the pilot study. A set of questionnaires with five constructs consisting of 20 items has been distributed and the means score showed significant accuracy. The item verification process based on the agreement of seven experts using the Content Validity Index (CVI) approach received experts (n=7) consensus reliability value (?) = 0.92. The results indicated that the LAL can adapt the self and peer assessment approach based on SOLO taxonomy in a short time and proves that the self- peer assessment process can be taught to the low achiever primary level if supported by opportunities to practice it regularly in an organized and supportive classroom environment.

A Mobile-Assisted Peer Assessment Approach for Evidence-Based Nursing Education.

Students who learn evidence-based nursing can assist the healthcare team to make proper medical decisions and provide patients with valuable advice, thus optimizing the quality of patient care in specific situations. In clinical work, nursing staff members participate in decision making by searching for relevant empirical nursing literature, a basic ability required to enter clinical practice. In traditional instruction, nursing students are taught the Problem, Intervention, Comparison, and Outcome method to learn to use library resources and gather empirical nursing knowledge for decision making. However, it is a challenge for most students to have sufficient practice to make decisions correctly and to have opportunities to perceive medical cases from diverse perspectives. Therefore, we propose a peer assessment-based Problem, Intervention, Comparison, and Outcome approach to help nursing students locate correct evidence and make appropriate decisions about patient care. We performed an experiment with our approach in a nursing university training program. The experimental results reveal that the subjects learning with the proposed approach show better evidence-based nursing knowledge, learning attitude, and critical thinking ability than those learning with the traditional approach.

An online collaborative peer-assessment approach to strengthening pre-service teachers’ digital content development competence and higher-order thinking tendency

The competences of making good use of digital information and technology as well as making critical judgments and communicating with others have been considered as important educational objectives, in particular, for teacher education. Peer assessment is a frequently adopted learning strategy to assist students in rating and offering instant feedback to peers from the perspective of instructors, which has good potential for fostering students’ critical thinking. However, the conventional peer-assessment approach mainly focuses on communications between reviewers and reviewees, while peer communications for collaboratively providing comments or suggestions are generally ignored. As a result, the present study proposed a Collaborative Feedback-based Peer-Assessment (CFPA) learning approach; moreover, a learning system was developed for evaluating the effectiveness of the different collaborative peer-assessment approaches by conducting a quasi-experiment in a pre-service teacher training program. Two classes of students participated in the experiment. One class including 48 students was the experimental group learning with the CFPA approach, while the other class with 49 students was the control group learning with the Non-Collaborative Peer Assessment (NCPA) approach. The findings indicated that the pre-service teachers who learned with the proposed approach showed significantly better instructional video development quality and commenting quality as well as higher self-efficacy and critical thinking tendency than those learning with the Non-Collaborative Peer Assessment approach.

Alternative Web-Based Assessment and Academic Self-Efficacy of Pre-Service Student Teachers

The aim of the present study was to identify the effect of web-based self and peer-assessment approaches on improving pre-service student teachers' academic self-efficacy. In this context, a study was carried out during the second semester of the 2018 academic year among 48 pre-service student teachers enrolled in the Teacher Preparation Program, at the College of Education at King Faisal University. The Academic Self-Efficacy of Alternative Web-Based Assessment survey questionnaire (ASEAWA) was used for the purpose of this study. The results highlighted the value of utilizing self and peer-assessment approaches to enhance pre-service student teacher academic self-efficacy. The study found no significant difference between the influence of web-based self and peer-assessment approaches on academic self-efficacy in terms of the two ASEAWA factors investigated: Academic Achievement and Academic Development. This study has several implications for designers and developers of teacher preparation programs as well as for further research in the field.

Facilitating knowledge construction in mobile learning contexts: A bi‐directional peer‐assessment approach

AbstractWith the advancements in technology networks, mobile learning has been extensively applied in teaching contexts, enabling closer interaction between students and authentic environments. Previous studies have indicated that, when learning in real‐world contexts, students need to interact with real learning targets and peers as well as the digital learning content; thus, effective learning strategies or tools are generally required for helping them organize knowledge and for promoting peer interactions. As a result, the present study developed a bi‐directional peer‐assessment‐based concept mapping system, which not only engages students in assessing peers’ concept maps, but also encourages them to evaluate or respond to peers’ ratings and comments. To explore the effectiveness of this learning system, the study conducted an experiment in elementary science classes. A total of 101 fifth graders from four classes were recruited to participate in the study. Two classes were assigned to the experimental group and two to the control group. The experimental group adopted the bi‐directional peer‐assessment approach, while the control group adopted the conventional peer assessment approach for concept mapping. The results reveal that the bi‐directional peer‐assessment‐based concept mapping system can not only increase students’ learning achievement and the completeness of their concept mapping, but can also enhance their critical thinking tendency and the feedback quality of their peer assessment.

Alternative Assessment Approaches and Quality Product Design Within Web-Based Learning Environments

The aim of the present study is to identify the impact of the alternative web-based self and peer assessment approaches on improving the quality of student educational projects. In this context, a study was carried out during the second semester of the 2017-2018 academic year among 48 postgraduate students at King Faisal University. Results indicated that both self and peer-assessment approaches are effective when assessing the quality of educational products. The results also showed that the extent of student experience with the self-assessment approach affects their assessment credibility and objectivity. This study emphasized the value of utilizing alternative assessment approaches in web-based learning environments as means of improving student performance, particularly when designing educational products. It may have theoretical and pedagogical implications for learners and teachers.

Enhancing students’ choreography and reflection in university dance courses: A mobile technology‐assisted peer assessment approach

AbstractChoreography is an important and challenging educational objective in dance courses. However, most previous technology‐enhanced learning studies for dance education mainly focused on students’ dance skills, while the issue concerning the approaches to promoting students’ choreographic performance has generally been ignored. To address this issue, the present study developed a mobile technology‐assisted peer assessment approach based on social constructivism for use in a university general education dance routine choreography class. A total of 266 university students were divided into an experimental group and a control group. The experiment lasted for 15 weeks and involved two rounds of peer assessment. The results showed that mobile peer assessment could significantly enhance the innovative competence of dance routines and dance skills. In addition, according to the students’ feedback, the dance routine choreography class was conducive to improving social skills, innovative competence, and intrinsic motivation, while mobile peer assessment could assist students in understanding accurate evaluation criteria, reflecting on their own in a more objective way, and broadening the aspects of appreciating the work.

Effects of a mobile technology-supported peer assessment approach on students' learning motivation and perceptions in a college flipped dance class

The present study integrated mobile technology into a flipped dance class. An experiment was conducted to understand the effects of the proposed approach on students' motivation and self-efficacy as well as the correlation between self-efficacy and motivation in the flipped learning context. A total of 65 university students from two classes were recruited for the study. The two classes adopted a traditional feedback approach and a mobile technology-supported peer assessment approach, respectively; the flipped teaching experiment lasted for eight weeks. The results showed that there was a significant positive correlation between students' self-efficacy and motivation in the flipped teaching context. Additionally, the mobile technology-supported peer assessment approach was found to be an instructional approach with great benefits, which could significantly enhance students' intrinsic motivation and strengthen their focus and reflection during activities.

Integration of the peer assessment approach with a virtual reality design system for learning earth science

This study developed a peer assessment approach incorporated into virtual reality (VR) design activities for fifth-grade students to learn knowledge about a geological park in their natural science course. All the students were asked to design a VR project after they had learned the geological knowledge, so as to raise their environmental awareness and cultivate their earth science knowledge. In order to evaluate the learning performance and perceptions of students in two groups, one with peer assessment and the other with teacher feedback, we collected the learning achievements, learning motivation, self-efficacy, critical thinking tendency, creativity tendency, and cognitive load of learners before and after the activities. The results indicated that students performing the VR design activity with the peer assessment learning approach had higher learning effectiveness. They also had higher self-efficacy and critical thinking tendencies than those using the VR design system with conventional teacher feedback. In other words, the peer assessment approach not only improves students’ learning achievement, but also enhances their self-efficacy and critical thinking tendencies.

Effects of a mobile technology-supported peer assessment approach on students' learning motivation and perceptions in a college flipped dance class

The present study integrated mobile technology into a flipped dance class. An experiment was conducted to understand the effects of the proposed approach on students' motivation and self-efficacy as well as the correlation between self-efficacy and motivation in the flipped learning context. A total of 65 university students from two classes were recruited for the study. The two classes adopted a traditional feedback approach and a mobile technology-supported peer assessment approach, respectively; the flipped teaching experiment lasted for eight weeks. The results showed that there was a significant positive correlation between students' self-efficacy and motivation in the flipped teaching context. Additionally, the mobile technology-supported peer assessment approach was found to be an instructional approach with great benefits, which could significantly enhance students' intrinsic motivation and strengthen their focus and reflection during activities.

The Effect of Peer Assessment on Pre-Service Teachers’ Teaching Practices

This study aims at determining the effect of peer assessment technique on pre-service teachers’ teaching practices. In this study, “case study” which is one of the qualitative research methods that provide an opportunity to study one side of the problem in the study in details, and in a shorter time was used. The study group of the study consists of pre-service teachers who studied at social studies teaching the program in the 2016-2017 academic year in the Faculty of Education, in Karadeniz Technical University, and the sample of the study consists of 14 pre-service teachers chosen among the final year students. In choosing the sample, homogeneous sampling method which is one of the “purposeful sampling methods “that provide information about the situations thought to have rich information was used. In the study, “semi-structured interview form” and “observation form” were carried out as data collection tools. The data obtained from the observation form were analyzed with “descriptive analysis technique” which is among the qualitative research methods. “Content analysis technique” was used in the analysis of the data obtained from the semi-structured interview form. According to the obtained findings, it was concluded that peer assessment approach has an important role in more qualified pre-service teacher training and in the improvement of the competence on the teaching profession, and peer assessment generally has a positive effect on pre-service teachers. Based on the results of the study, some suggestions were made; an environment in which pre-service teachers can be trained better in terms of professional skill by involving peer assessment in teaching practice can be created, pre-service teachers can be informed well about peer assessment approach by experts, and they can be informed in a detailed way related to the process.

An online peer assessment approach to supporting mind-mapping flipped learning activities for college English writing courses

English is the important international language in the world. In Asia, many non-English-speaking countries regard English writing education as one of the primary goals of English education reform. Faced with this trend, teachers tried to train students to master the skills of English writing to cope with the global villages in the twenty first century. In the flipped classroom, although students could effectively receive out-of-class and in-class opportunities for exercises to improve learning; however, summarizing, organizing, even evaluating others’ writing remain difficult tasks for students. In order to develop students’ learner autonomy or high-level thinking skills to achieve the goal of English teaching, the use of mind-mapping learning strategy is known an effective knowledge construction tool for helping students’ organizational thinking and paraphrasing in English writing skills. Besides, many previous studies have considered the peer assessment an effective learning strategy in the writing classrooms to provide students with a teacher’s perspective view to think and evaluate writing. Therefore, this research developed an online peer assessment approach to supporting mind-mapping flipped classrooms. Moreover, an experiment has been conducted to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of the proposed approach on students’ English learning analytics such as time involvement and learning reflections. It is important that educators could continuously create the online peer assessment learning environment for learners and aim for the goals to help learners become more critical, independent, and autonomous in English language learning.

Effects of a mobile-based peer-assessment approach on enhancing language-learners’ oral proficiency

ABSTRACT Peer assessment (PA) has transformed traditional teacher-only assessment into the student-centred assessment. While this pedagogical approach has been adopted online in recent years, incorporating PA into classrooms has proven to be challenging. In this study, mobile-supported PA (M-PA) activities using Instant Response System (IRS) mechanisms to enhance oral proficiency are proposed for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students. A quasi-experiment was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of this approach in the context of an English language course at a university. A total of 60 university students participated, 30 of whom were in the experimental group using the M-PA method and 30 of whom were in the control group using the conventional teacher-only assessment method. The results show that the M-PA method can effectively promote students’ oral proficiency, facilitate personal reflection, and foster positive perceptions of learning.

Students’ perceptions of peer assessment effectiveness: an explorative study

ABSTRACTDespite increasing demands by stakeholders to instil teamwork skills in accounting graduates, the assessment practices associated with teamwork in the accounting curricula are not yet well developed. This study examined the association between students’ perceptions of peer assessment attributes (i.e. anonymity, question relevance and mark allocation) and the perceived effectiveness of peer assessment in preventing free riding, reducing conflict, improving communication and enhancing the quality of contributions to teamwork. A peer assessment approach was trialled at a master's accounting course at an Australian university and data were collected via a survey of students’ perceptions of their experiences. Quantitative and qualitative data were gathered to address the research objectives. The results suggested that students who found the mark allocation appropriate, also found that the peer evaluation system had a positive effect in reducing free riding, improving communication within the team and enhancing the quality of contribution of the team members. Students who highly valued the anonymity in peer assessment, also found that peer assessment reduced free riding among team members. Students’ qualitative comments suggested that additional mechanisms are needed in peer assessment, including formative feedback from peers and having teaching staff moderate the marks for summative assessment purposes.