Video: The importance of self and peer assessment
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Below are the key elements of the video:
There are hundreds of assessment methods. However, according to several scholars, it is important to increase the student's participation in the assessment, because this helps them learn better. As we know, this characteristic is typical of TBLT, which is a teaching method that puts students at the centre.
For this reason, in this module we study peer and self-assessment. These two evaluation methods help the student to reflect on his or her own learning, skills and competences.
Self- and peer-assessment are a type of task-based assessment.
Peer and self-assessment are useful for teachers and students. Teachers can learn whether students reflect on their learning.
Students, on the other hand, can learn to evaluate their work objectively, and thus better understand their strengths and weaknesses. With peer and self-assessment, students can see for themselves whether they are ready to do a task. In this way, students put themselves to the test.
However, task-based assessment has disadvantages: are we sure that students know how to self-assess and evaluate others? Are we sure that their assessment will be as accurate and objective as the teacher's?
These concerns are important and should always remind us that, in the classroom, the didactic expert is the teacher.
For this reason, the teacher must explain to students how to assess themselves: he or she must talk in class about learning objectives and assessment criteria. In this way, the students can better understand what the teacher expects of them.
Let us now see how peer and self-assessment work. To do this, we need to go back to Module 4.
In Module 4, we saw how to design an activity. The activity was "Creating a catalogue of recommended films".
In that activity, we asked students to select 3 or 5 films that belong to their favourite genre. The students had to discuss, express agreement or disagreement, and arrive at a final decision by creating a catalogue to present to the class.
If we decide to use peer assessment as the evaluation method for this activity, then we need to explain to the students what the learning objectives and evaluation criteria are for this activity.
We can ask students to pay attention to their peers' presentations and evaluate them by focusing on a few main criteria, for example:
- Coherence: is the catalogue well thought out?
- Organisation: is the presentation smooth? Does it have a structure that includes an introduction, a main body and a conclusion?
- Language: is the language precise and appropriate to the context?
- Public speaking: Is the student confident? Has he/she engaged the audience?
We ask the students to write their comments on a document that the class has created together or that the teacher has created directly.
If, on the other hand, we decide to use self-assessment as a method of evaluation, we can record each student's performance and ask them to listen to it again at home or in class, and self-assess themselves according to the same criteria used to evaluate others.
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