Students’ attitude to peer assessment process: a critical factor for success

ABSTRACT

Peer assessment has been frequently used to improve students’ academic writing skills. However, how to address students’ unsatisfactory attitude during the peer assessment process remains a major challenge to further improve students’ learning outcome and engagement. In our project, we implemented Interactive Peer Assessment, which comprised various components, to improve students’ attitude during the peer assessment process. One hundred and fifty-three students participated in the Interactive Peer Assessment on academic writing at a wiki platform. Data were collected from student questionnaires and the records in webpages of wiki platform. It was found that the students demonstrated different levels of attitude changes in the form of compliance, identification and internalisation, and that different attitude changes were elicited by various components of the Interactive Peer Assessment. Significant learning improvement was also found in students’ academic writing skills. Results of this study demonstrate the value and importance of incorporating strategies planned specifically to foster and maintain a positive attitude in the peer assessment process so as to enhance the desired effectiveness of peer assessment on learning outcomes and engagement.

KEYWORDS:

• Peer assessment
• attitude
• attitude change
• academic writing
• engagement

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes on contributors

Wing Shui Ng

Dr. Wing Shui Ng is a Research Assistant Professor at The Open University of Hong Kong. He has extensive involvement in computer education in Hong Kong. With continuous engagement in international research-related activities, he currently serves as an Associate Editor-in-Chief of The International Journal of Doctoral Studies (IJDS), a Reviewer of papers submitted to international journals, conferences and academic books, and a Speaker as well as a Committee Member of international conferences. He has published a number of academic articles, including journal papers, conference papers, book chapters, and an edited book, in the areas of Educational Assessment, Information Technology in Education and STEM Education.

Guoxing Yu

Dr Guoxing Yu is Professor of Language Assessment, University of Bristol; an Expert Member of European Association for Language Testing and Assessment. He is an Executive Editor of Assessment in Education (since 2010), and serves on the editorial boards of Language Testing, Language Assessment Quarterly, Assessing Writing, and Language Testing in Asia. He is the co-editor of two book series: Language Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge (Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, China), and Research and Practice in Language Assessment (Palgrave Macmillan).