Peer evaluation: what it is, characteristics, advantages and disadvantages

Evaluation is a necessary process in any educational process. Knowing to what degree the students have acquired the knowledge exposed in class is essential to know how efficient learning is being.

However, the person who can evaluate it does not always have to be the teacher. Students can participate in this process, both by self-evaluating, that is, evaluating their own work, and by co-evaluating, evaluating what their classmates have done.

Next we will focus on the evaluation, its main characteristics, how it should be applied, advantages, difficulties and an example.

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What is peer review?

The evaluation consists, fundamentally, in that the evaluation of the students' work is carried out by the students themselves, observing, analyzing and evaluating the work of their classmates. It is a process carried out between peers, based on predefined criteria, normally suggested by the teacher, which will serve to evaluate the performance and quality of colleagues, in order to understand if they have acquired the learning that is learned from them wait.

All students fulfill two roles simultaneously. On the one hand, there is being evaluated with their own work, in which they have to demonstrate that they have acquired the theoretical knowledge presented in class; and on the other hand there is the role of evaluators, applying the practical knowledge taught in the correction session, knowing how to use a swap or rubric and trying to put aside the feelings they may have towards the student they are evaluating in order to make the most objective correction possible.

Characteristics of this method to evaluate

There are several characteristics that we can highlight from the co-evaluation, here they are explained in a summarized way.

1. Used in collaborative work

Peer evaluation is a tool that It is usually used in collaborative work, that is, work done in groups. One or all the members of the group value the work of the others, how they have helped in the accomplishment of the work, if they have shown that they possess the knowledge expected of them, if there has been any problem...

2. Used in individual works

Peer assessment can also be used on individual assignments. Here The situation is similar to the role that the teacher plays by analyzing the work of his students, except that each student only corrects the work of a classmate., not of all.

3. Student acts as evaluated and evaluator

Especially in individual work, the student acts as both evaluated and evaluator simultaneously. He is evaluated insofar as he has also done a piece of work and another classmate is evaluating him, and he is an evaluator because he is evaluating the work of another student.

Knowing this, the student tends to make constructive criticism towards his partner, since he understands that in the same way that he would not like to be told the things that he has done wrong in bad ways, he should not say them like that either. Feedback beneficial to both parties is encouraged.

4. control of emotions

This tool helps better understand how a correction should be made, in addition to identifying their own errors and those of others that allow them to be more aware of the extent to which the content explained in class is mastered.

However, in addition to this, the affective capacities of the students are enhanced, since, when given a task that implies high responsibility, the student is motivated and controls their emotionality, trying to be as objective as possible and avoiding that any bias towards the person evaluating could make them give a correction inappropriate.

5. Time saving

Having the students themselves correct the work of their classmates is a great time saver for the teacher, since You do not have to mark all the work of the 20-30 students in the class.

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Aspects to consider

Peer evaluation is a useful tool but it is not always possible to apply it. It is not recommended to apply it at the beginning of the school year or when starting a class topic, above all because the students do not have any knowledge that can be evaluated and it is expected that they do not do the work well or know what they have to correct. For it to work, first the subject to be evaluated must have been explained, then the teacher must explain to the student that they will be evaluated among peers and, finally, give them the guidelines on how to do it.

Students should be insisted that it is not simply that they see the mistakes that their classmates may have made, but that they think that the work that they themselves do can fall into the hands of a colleague more or less strict. Everyone must be as objective as possible, but they must also do their work to the best of their ability, since the person who evaluates is not the teacher, but someone they don't know to what extent they may consider it wrong or inappropriate how they have responded to a exercise.

During the explanation that they are going to evaluate the work of others, the teacher must make students aware so that when giving feedback they avoid being unpleasant or making inappropriate comments. It is about learning by testing one's own knowledge and identifying to what extent others dominate or not, it should not become a personal attack or a strategy to ruin the term for someone who dislike. Constructive comments should be made.

Advantages

Although in the characteristics section some of the advantages of the application of peer evaluation have been suggested, Next we will see the main ones that this tool supposes.

• They learn to value the evaluation processes and the performance of their peers.
• Responsibility is encouraged.
• They learn the difficulty of an evaluation.
• Collaborative work is encouraged.
• They develop analytical skills.
• It is an opportunity to share learning strategies together.

Disadvantages

While peer review is a very useful tool, it also has its drawbacks. The reason why most teachers prefer to use traditional assessment, that is, mark all the work themselves, is that it is a much more standardized process. Besides, it is difficult to trust that students will correct objectively and adequately, since they do not always have the necessary knowledge or experience, in addition to the fact that there can always be interpersonal conflicts in the classroom.

Instruments for co-evaluation

Normally, when a peer-assessment exercise is introduced in class, the teacher explains how the work of the other classmates should be evaluated and Distribute some document that allows to standardize the correction. This document can be a rubric or an estimation scale, in which it is noted if the partner's work meets different criteria. In them there is a series of statements accompanied by levels or values ​​and that, if fulfilled, different scores are awarded to the work that has been received.

Usually, the heading of the estimation scale indicates the subject or content to be evaluated and, next to it, the name of the evaluated student is placed in a box. In the first column, the aspects to be evaluated are written in the form of statements (p. eg, “Her work of hers is free of misspellings”) and the achievement levels are integrated in the following columns (p. g., always - sometimes - never).

Regardless of the subject or aspect being evaluated, it is usual that at the end of the rubric or the estimative scale is placed a box that serves as a section for suggestions, aspects to improve or observations. There, in case the evaluator considers it so, comments will be written as feedback to the student so that they think about those mistakes that they may have made and learn from them.

Conclusion

Peer evaluation is a very useful tool in the educational field. Among its main advantages is that it allows students to participate in the process of learning, being aware of what knowledge is expected of them and knowing how to identify what they have acquired. It is also a tool that makes it possible to break with the traditional teacher-student evaluation, saving time for the teacher and giving practical experience to their students.

As long as the teacher has given guidelines on how to do it, she has made sure that the content to be evaluated has been previously taught and trust that your students will evaluate their peers honestly and fairly, it becomes a truly useful tool and profitable. On the other hand, if the student body is not committed or is not mature enough to distinguish between the personal and the academic, it becomes wasted time.

Bibliographic references:

• Valenzuela, J.R. (2007). Learning Assessments in distance education; Common practices and uses of technological resources.
• Diaz B.. F. (1993). Methodological approaches to curricular design: made a comprehensive proposal. Magazine Technology in educational communication. No 21.