1. What is peer assessment, and why do we use it at University of the People?

When a student gives feedback or grades a work of another peer student following the teacher’s

criterion, the process is called peer assessment. And online peer assessment (OPA) is getting

really popular in higher education and a lot of schools and universities have integrated the

process into learning including University of the People. According to UoPeople, they include

peer assessment in learning to improve the students’ critical thinking by learning the ideas and

perspectives of their classmates (2017).

2. What are the benefits of peer assessment?

The Cornell University concludes that using peer assessment, students can manage their own

learning and can get a lot of knowledge from others (n.d.). Furthermore, the university also states

that students will learn the course more deeply in order to assess their classmates’ work and it

will also improve the students’ assessment skills which could be useful in the future (n.d.) Other

lifelong skills such as critical and creative thinking and decision-making skills can also be

improved using peer assessment.

3. What are the challenges of giving peer feedback in peer assessment?

There are a handful challenges of giving peer feedback in peer assessment. Different people have

different opinions on things. So, you can be mistaken and think they are wrong when their

thoughts are just different. Sometimes, you might not get what their saying and don’t know how

to give feedback on that matter and sometimes, although, you understand them, you just don’t

know what to say. Other times, you have to think of how to sound positive because when you

give very straight-forward feedback, you might come off as mean.

 4. What are the challenges of receiving peer feedback in peer assessment?

Receiving peer feedback has similar challenges with giving peer feedback in peer assessment.

Just like mentioned above, different people have different ideas. So, your peers might have not

understood you and give you a low grading. On some occasion, you might understand the

assignment but your assessor might not. So, even though they are in the wrong, they might think

they are right and gives you false feedback.

5. What strategies will you use to peer assess written assignments? How will you assess

discussion assignments?

For written assignments, I would usually look at the teacher’s benchmark and grade them first

using that. If they are talking about things that are not familiar with me, I will research them first

and share my opinion in the feedback. Then, I will look at their writing; cohesion, conciseness

and grammar. Furthermore, I would look for whether they put effort in their work or not, do they

have creativity and critical thinking, etc.

Assessing discussion assignments for me is the same. But I don’t care much about the grammar,

cohesion or conciseness. Of course, they are important but the first thing I look for is their ideas

and how they present it to the audience.

But at the end of the day nobody is perfect and we are all students after all. So, I wish I can just

learn more from my peers though these assignments and not just look for the grades.

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References
Cornell University. (n.d.). Peer assessment | Center for Teaching Innovation. Cornell University.

https://teaching.cornell.edu/teaching-resources/assessment-evaluation/peer-assessment

University of the People. (2017). Collaborative And Peer to Peer Learning. University of the

People. https://www.uopeople.edu/student-experience/quality/collaborative-peer-peer-

learning/.