Learning from peers: Fostering knowledge discovery through co-assessment by peers

Abstract

Almost everyone agrees that student presentations benefit the students in significant ways. That is why presentation is often required as part of coursework. However, those teachers who implement presentations should experience much problem of how to get the rest of the class "listen" to others' presentations. Without listening actively to the presenter, the audience loses a valuable chance to learn from their peers' work. Although engaging students to assess their peers' work is suggested as a possible method to get students listening and learning from presentations of others, the lack of understanding of students' stresses and concerns in peer assessment creates much hurdle to motivate students learning from others' presentation. Besides, the existing peer assessment tools available in the market are mainly focused on the summative assessment which fails to encourage deep learning and knowledge discovery. The proposed project aims to conduct in-depth empirical studies to collect students' views related to peer assessment, feedback and reflection. The findings will be used to design and develop a web-based system that actively engages students as co-assessors in the presentations and disseminates useful feedback to presenters for reflection. The research findings and web-based assessment platform should enable teachers to integrate peer assessment into their formative and summative assessments in a more effective way. The devised framework should also foster a knowledge discovery and sharing culture among students.