Peer feedback is an essential academic skill. It helps students learn more deeply - if it’s done well. Peer feedback is also increasingly an explicit learning objective in courses and curricula. But how do you assess this skill? This tip explores how to do that.
Tip 1: students first need to learn how to give peer feedback
Before you assess peer feedback, students need time and space to develop this skill. Don’t assume they already know how to give good feedback. In previous tips, we outlined what makes feedback effective and how to teach these skills. We’ve also developed knowlege clips that you can share with your students to help them learn how to give and receive peer feedback. It is important that students have the opportunity to learn from their mistakes so that they can grow in developing these skills.
Tip 2: start with formative peer feedback activities
Peer feedback is a scalable way to give students useful feedback, especially in courses with large amounts of students. Research shows that students often learn more from peer feedback than from teacher feedback. Why? Because they question and reflect on peer feedback more critically, whereas feedback from an expert is often accepted without deeper thinking. Students also learn a lot from giving feedback: by critically engaging with someone else’s work, they gain new insights into their own work. That’s why it’s worth using peer feedback regularly as a teaching activity - even without grading it.
Tip 3: use this rubric to assess peer feedback skills
If you include peer feedback as a learning objective, it’s important to assess it too. That can be challenging in large groups, so we have developed a rubric for you: download the rubric here. This rubric was specifically designed to assess peer feedback on academic student work. It looks at the quantity, quality, and tone of the feedback students give to others, as well as how they engage with the feedback they receive. The rubric content aligns with the knowlege clips in which students learn peer feedback skills.
You can use the rubric to assess your students’ skills - or share it with them as a learning tool. Students can use it to reflect on their own development and identify areas for improvement. You can also use the rubric as inspiration to create your own version, tailored to your course and its specific learning objectives.