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Blended & Online Learning Design Fellows

Blended & Online Learning Design Fellows

Coursera: Peer-assessed assignments

Peer assessment allow you to create open-ended assignments and projects, and assessments that let students practice more in-depth analysis and critical thinking.
Source

Use it to assess non-testable content

Typically used in humanities, social science, and design engineering classes, peer assessments allow instructors to assign essays, long-answer questions, drawings, designs, photographs, video, music, collaborative projects, and more.

Pros

It offers flexibility and customization.

It gives students a chance to learn by being both the “student” and “teacher.”

Peer-assessment training. This allows students to first practice evaluating a limited number (three to five) of instructor-graded submissions using a rubric. To pass the training exercise, the student’s grades would have to fall within an acceptable range, as defined by the instructor.

Cons

Lack of instructor control. Peer-assessed assignments require a good-faith effort on the part of each student not only to submit original work in the proper format and the proper language, but also to then anonymously evaluate the work of others attentively and constructively.

Importance of rubrics. Students often do not have experience in evaluating the work of others. Thus, rubrics are essential to this form of assessment, as students are asked to provide both quantitative and qualitative feedback to their peers.