Keith J. Topping (2009) Peer Assessment, Theory Into Practice, 48:1, 20-27, DOI: 10.1080/00405840802577569; pages 25-26

How to Organize Peer Assessment

Providing effective feedback is a cognitively complex task requiring understanding of the goals of the task and the criteria for success, and the ability to make judgments about the relationship of the product or performance to these goals. Good organization is perhaps the most important quality of implementation integrity, leading to consistent and productive outcomes. Important planning issues evident in the literature (Topping, 2003; Webb & Farivar, 1994) are outlined below.

1. Seek to work with colleagues rather than developing the initiative alone.

2. Clarify purpose, rationale, expectations, and acceptability with all stakeholders. Are you aiming for cognitive, attitudinal, social, or emotional gains? Specify the nature of the products of learning to be assessed. Broach the idea with the students very early and, over time, seek their advice on and approval of the scheme.

3. Involve participants in developing and clarifying assessment criteria. Students need to be involved in developing the criteria for assessment in order to feel a sense of ownership and decrease any anxiety, even if they come up with something similar to what the teacher would have given them anyway. Small group discussion of teacher-proposed draft criteria should lead to a modest amount of suggested change.

4. Match participants and arrange contact. Generally aim for same-ability peer matching. If the peer partners are from the same class, roughly list them in order of ability in the subject of assessment, and pair the first two, the second two, and so on down the list (or the first three or four for peer response groups). Pairs or groups of students at the bottom of the list may be operating at the lowest level, but with some teacher support they may gain more than expected, as they will be involved in the same processes but at a simpler level.

5. Provide training, examples, and practice. Quality training will make a great deal of difference. Talk to students about what is expected of them, including the roles and behaviors expected of assessor and assessee. Then show them how to do it, perhaps by using a role play between two adults. Have the students practice peer assessment on a very short task selected for the purpose. While they practice, circulate to monitor their performance. Give feedback and coaching where needed.

6. Provide guidelines, checklists, or other tangible scaffolding. Some kind of written and/ab or pictorial reminders or clues to the process to be followed will help, e.g., a simple sheet with not more than eight reminders of what to do and how to do it.

7. Specify activities and timescale. Make clear what needs to be done, within what time-scale, and what records (if any) need to be kept. What of those who finish early—should extra peer assessment work be available or can they switch to some other kind of work? What of those who finish late—how can they be given timescales and reminders to keep them up to speed?

8. Monitor and coach. Whenever students are involved in peer assessment, keep a low profile and circulate among them, giving feedback and coaching as necessary.

9. Examine the quality of peer feedback. Particularly in the early days, check at least a portion of the peer assessments against your own assessments of the work. Choose a high, middle, and low ability student for this. Do not be surprised if the feedback is different from your own. The more feedback there is, the more chance it will be diverse. If it is very different, discuss this with the partners involved.

10. Moderate reliability and validity of feedback. Over time, keep consistent checks on the match between peer assessments (if more than one peer assesses the same piece of work), and on the relationship between peer and teacher assessments. Do not assume the teacher’s are any more reliable than the peers! You might want to match yours against the average of several peer assessments.

11. Evaluate and give feedback. Give the students information about your observations of their performance as peer assessors and your check on the reliability of their assessments. Unless they have this information, their ability to provide useful feedback will not change for the better.