ENHANCING ASSESSMENT IN THE BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES  

Download PDF of this section (145 KB)

I think peer assessment is really important, because it leads to self-awareness, on the students' part, that they are part of a bigger enterprise and that their values are actually of interest to us. [academic]

Description

Students are increasingly encouraged to participate in the assessment process through evaluation and critique of one another's work. Such peer assessment (sometimes called peer review) can take a variety of forms, including providing feedback on the written work or oral presentations of their peers. Grading may be involved but, when it is, the weighted contribution to the overall grade is usually modest. Students benefit as much, if not more, from the process of providing feedback as they do from the feedback received.

... assessing others helps you realise what makes a good talk ... so I think it's a good learning tool. [student]

Commonly, peer assessment tasks are designed to encourage and enable students to critically assess their own work. In order to evaluate the work of others, students need to consider the specified assessment criteria and distinguish between different levels of achievement, or 'standards' - in this way, peer assessment develops the skills necessary for effective self-assessment.

Self-assessment is fundamental to students' learning, including their ability to benefit from the feedback received from others. Some approaches to self-assessment involve students 'testing' their knowledge or skills using tools and quizzes. Other approaches, such as self-assessment of an essay or presentation, will involve the students making more evaluative judgements about their work. Increasingly, self-assessment is incorporated into the formal assessment of certain tasks, including group projects and presentations.

Self-assessment involving the use of online tools and/or multiple choice questions is also described under [Tests and Quizzes] and [Online assessment], as appropriate [Examples: Peat 6; Mrongovius 1].

The assessment of group projects often includes students' assessment of the contribution of themselves and the other members of the group. Peer and self-assessment of this type is also described under [see also: Groupwork].

Approaches

Peer assessment, or 'peer review', and self-assessment is being incorporated into the assessment of a range of tasks, and is being implemented in a variety of ways, in the biological sciences. For example:

a. Written work, which may be any of a variety of forms, including:

• essays , such as
  • peer review of drafts, prior to submission for grading by teaching staff. This can serve as an incentive to engage with the task early, and allows students to utilise the feedback in preparing their final essay [Examples: Quinnell 1; Wilson 1]; and
  • self-assessment and written critique of an essay, following preliminary feedback from teaching staff [Example: Wilson 1].
• research reports , including reports of group projects and research projects, and often prepared in the style of a scientific paper in the relevant biological sciences discipline [ Example: Mulder 1];
• professional placement reports, including reports of industry placement or clinical practice [Example: Cooke 2];
• grant proposals assessed using the criteria of a relevant funding agency, such as ARC or NH&MRC [Example: Mamo];
• ethics applications, particularly relevant to research students, such as Honours students; and
• tests or quizzes , such as regular laboratory tests.

b. Presentations, which may involve seminar presentations and posters [Examples: Fairweather 1; Fairweather 2; Pane] [see also: Presentations].

c. Project materials, for example a laboratory assay kit [Example: Hancock 1]

d. Group projects, and may involve the assessment of relative contributions [Example: Fairweather 1], the level and nature of contributions [Examples: Bird; Macaulay] or the projects' outcomes [Example: Hancock 1] [see also: Groupwork].

e. Practical work, where students may be asked to write reflections on their own learning to encourage them to 'learn how to learn' and to give feedback on their progress to demonstrators [Example: Ross 1].

The examples that were described to us were variously implemented. The principal decision points in the design of peer assessment tasks appear to be as follow:

• Grading: Will a grade (or score) be assigned, and will this contribute to the students' formal grade for the task? If so, will the decision be in combination with staff and/or self-assessment?
• Anonymity: Will the peer review be blind, in that the reviewer is anonymous? Will it be double-blind, in that the reviewer does not know whose work they are reviewing?
• Feedback: Will the feedback be written, oral or both?

Feedback

Peer assessment can make a valuable, and unique, contribution to feedback for students. It can, for example:

• provide a diversity of perspectives, closely reflecting the process of peer review in science;
• be more immediate, as the effort is shared by all rather than dependent on one or few teaching staff. The importance of the timeliness of feedback is well recognised [see also: Providing feedback]; and
• help students develop the skills necessary for effective self-assessment.

Issues and strategies

1. Assessment criteria

Students need a clear understanding of the assessment criteria if peer assessment is to be effective. Providing students with this insight is simply good practice in any form of assessment - one of the benefits of peer assessment is that it provides students with an opportunity to practice applying criteria and standards.

Strategies for preparing students for peer assessment include:

• Class time spent discussing, and in some cases developing, the criteria;

  The important thing is that everybody gets to see what the assessment criteria are, everybody gets to discuss and try to understand what they are about. If need be, we can change them - I always give them that option. On occasion, we will tinker about with either the wording, and therefore the intention, or perhaps the weighting. [academic]

• Opportunities to practice and discuss peer assessment; and
• Explicit guidelines, such as rubrics (assessment sheets detailing both the criteria and levels of achievement) [Examples: Hancock 1; Macaulay]

2. Developing skills in providing feedback

In addition to understanding the assessment criteria, students need to develop the skills of providing constructive feedback. Students typically have little experience in providing feedback. As a result, oral feedback tends to be overly positive while written feedback can be overly critical. It is therefore important to discuss this with students in advance and, ideally, to provide opportunities for them to develop these skills collaboratively.

3. Logistics and staff workloads

The issue of efficiently coordinating peer review was raised by several of the academic staff we interviewed, particularly when the task involved written work, written feedback and 'blind' reviewing. One solution to this problem employs the use of a specifically-designed online tool [Example: Mulder 1].

Generic skills

Engaging in peer and self-assessment contributes to students' development of critical thinking and communication skills. Peer assessment is also used to directly assess some generic skills, including communication and teamwork.

Critical thinking

To effectively evaluate an essay or a seminar presentation against a set of criteria, it is necessary to consider various aspects of the work (for example content, style, structure) separately, and to evaluate each - to consider the strengths and weaknesses, and to conceive of ways in which the work might be improved [Example: Fairweather 2].

Communication skills

Providing feedback in a manner which is both supportive and constructively critical, a skill that is highly valued for collaborative team work and leadership roles.

Peer assessment is a common feature in the assessment of presentations, including presentations that closely mirror discipline-specific forms of communication in the biological sciences [see also: Presentations].

Team work

Peer and self-assessment of group projects provides direct assessment of team work skills, as the focus is typically upon the contribution of group members to the team process and effort, rather than assessment of the project's 'end product' [see also: Groupwork].

Authentic assessment

Peer review of research is fundamental in the sciences. This may take the form of formal 'assessment' - such as for publication in refereed journals or for research grant applications. Less formalised peer review is also a central component of collaborative research, as colleagues critique one anothers' ideas.

To reference material from this site, please use:

Harris, K-L., Krause, K., Gleeson, D., Peat, M., Taylor, C. & Garnett, R. (2007). Enhancing Assessment in the Biological Sciences: Ideas and resources for university educators. Available at: www.bioassess.edu.au