Context on feedback and assessment
In my recent e-learning course, ‘recursive feedback’ was termed as a new generation of assessment systems, including continuous machine-mediated human assessment from multiple perspectives (peers, self, teacher, parents, invited experts, etc.) and machine feedback (selected and supply response assessments, natural language processing). As education will become more integrated with digital technologies with more channels and data available, there is a huge innovative potential to be tapped on the various ways to improve and enrich recursive feedback to enhance the learning experience and outcome.
A key context about feedback is the distinction between ‘summative’ and ‘formative’ assessment. I found that Bloom’s definitions (Bloom, 1969, see reference) on the terms of summative and formative assessment towards students were commonly adopted. For Bloom, ‘formative assessment’ is to provide feedback and correctives at each stage in the teaching-learning process. ‘Summative assessment’ is used to judge what the learner has achieved at the end of a course or programmes.
Dr. Bill Cope (e-learning ecologies on Coursera, 2021, see reference) explained the difference from a time perspective. Summative assessment gives only a backward-looking view at a particular point in time. Whereas various formats of formative assessment allow educators to collect more data and generate more insights on the learners’ learning journey at various points in time. The ongoing assessment and feedback to the learners can have forward-looking impacts for improvements. Therefore, I prefer to look at peer review in the context of formative assessment.
Concept of peer review
In various areas regarding research programmes and school/teacher evaluation, the terminology ‘peer review’ is often used to describe the process of evaluating and providing feedback from peer or expert researchers, schools, and teachers. However, I like to discuss the concept of ‘peer review’ focusing on the learners/students which means the ‘process whereby students grade each other’s work for either summative or formative purposes’ (Bostock, 2006, see reference).
Main benefits argued on adopting peer review include: the improvement of critical thinking (for both learners who receive feedback and learners who provide feedback), increasing students’ engagement in the assessment process and ability to conduct self-evaluation (Daniel et al, 2013, see reference).
There are many approaches towards designing and implementing peer review. It can be argued that the benefits/effectiveness of peer review are dependent on how peer review is designed to who and for what purposes with what grading impacts. The design also significantly varies based on the specific subject and content.
Example
During my master’s degree more than 10 years ago, peer review was used to form part of the grading for the final paper submitted at the end of the course, i.e., summative assessment. Some classmates complained about the use of peer review and its impact on the grades. To them, this was not desirable as they felt they were worse off due to in-class competition. Ngar-Fun (Ngar-Fun et al, 2007, see reference) also mentioned in the study about some findings on the students’ resistance to peer assessment using grades.
Looking back, I think the peer review would be better off to be part of the formative assessment alongside the course progress so people did not feel the decisive and irreversible impacts. Also, the review should focus more on producing detailed feedback to each other, rather than marking with a grade without explanations.
During my e-learning journey with Coursera, peer review was used for each assignment along various topics of the course, i.e., formative assessment. I personally have been really enjoying this process and learning from the peer feedback. I felt my work was recognised when a peer marked it with 100%. When my peer provides feedback to my work, I would be quite attentive to what it meant and how I could improve.
Honestly speaking, I am more motivated to read feedback from my peers than spending time to provide feedback to my peers. Therefore, the enforcement of give and take from Coursera’s design can be useful. Of course, for Coursera and University of Illinois, the use of peer review benefits them a lot in generating detailed learning evidence of each learner and reducing efforts for validation and surveillance.
Looking at the examples, clearly, I do understand that, at least traditionally speaking, the importance of obtaining a master’s degree weighs much higher than that of an e-learning course. So, the examples are merely to illustrate actual use cases when schools and online learning platforms design peer review. They are not comparable. On the peer review design and learners’ experience, it will probably be a good idea for me to do more research and write an article on what could be effective design for various scenarios and the pros/cons of the design decision.
Summary
I think it can be quite challenging to design an effective peer review mechanism because of various behavioural factors to take in account. For e-learning in particular, a lot of research still need to be established to prove the benefits under various conditions.
However, I strongly believe that the use of peer review and the continuous formative assessment and feedback driven by peers are much needed in the design of overall assessment. Learning from peers is beneficial for the learner to reflect. The process of absorbing feedback, evaluating, and creating feedback can be truly relevant and useful skills for a life-long learner. The traditional one-off exam and teacher’s marking at the end of the course does not help to motivate and improve the learning experience, either in classroom or virtual settings.
Reference
Bloom, S. (1969). Some theoretical issues relating to educational evaluation. In Educational evaluation: New roles, new means. The 63rd yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, part 2 (Vol. 69), ed. R.W. Tyler, 26–50. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, cited from <https://www.iier.org.au/iier23/boase-jelinek.pdf> on 1st Apr 2021.
Bostock, S. (2006). Student peer assessment, cited from < http://www.keele.org.uk/docs/bostock_peer_assessment.htm> on 1st Apr 2021.
William, C. and Mary, K. (2021). e-Learning Ecologies: Innovative Approaches to Teaching and Learning for the Digital Age, MOOC lecture note cited from <https://www.coursera.org/learn/elearning> on 1st Apr 2021.
Daniel, B-J. Jenni P and Jan H. (2013). Eucational Research, 23(2), 2013: Special Issue 119 Student reflection and learning through peer reviews, cited from <https://www.iier.org.au/iier23/boase-jelinek.pdf> on 1st Apr 2021.
Ngar-Fun, L. and David, C. (2006) Peer feedback: the learning element of peer assessment, Teaching in Higher Education, 11:3, 279–290, DOI: 10.1080/13562510600680582, cited from <https://srhe.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13562510600680582?src=recsys> on 1st Apr 2021.
