Abstract:

Formative peer-group assessment was introduced in a postgraduate advanced insurance class, with the objective of enhancing student engagement, deepening learning, and strengthening problem solving and critical thinking skills. It is a student-determined assessment comprising a set of six tasks in which student groups set, undertake, mark, provide feedback and evaluate an authentic assessment. Task 1 and 2 involve creating an assessment task and solution, requiring each student group to create a practical case study scenario which serves as an assessment task for another group, with a corresponding model solution. Task 3 requires two groups to swop claims examples and answer each other’s questions. Task 4 involves marking the assessment task, where the answers are given back to the original group to be marked against the model solution already created. Task 5 encompasses feedback, involving a discussion of the written feedback given by each group to the other, and the opportunity for groups to provide oral feedback to one another. Group members raise concerns if they are not happy with how their answer was marked; the other group must justify or modify their marking (and rubric) based on the discussion. The sixth and final task is the peer evaluation, where each group undertakes a peer evaluation of the group they were teamed up with, evaluating the practical scenario they had answered, and the written and oral feedback received. Task 6 also includes an individual peer evaluation of their own group members i.e. how well they worked together as a group to create the practical scenario and solution.

The assessment was originally conceived as “assessment-as-learning” as opposed to “assessment-of-learning” or “assessment-for-learning” but we have drawn on the concept of Learning Oriented Assessment (LOA) and the idea of sustainable assessment in our more recent evaluative cycles of the assessment. Sustainable assessment looks at how an assessment task contributes towards development as a self-directed lifelong learner enabling a person to undertake necessary development and make judgements about their level of success without needing external input. This is particularly important when a course is looking to develop cognitive abilities within a field using examples of content and where graduates will be expected to work with content they have not been specifically taught. With students taking on the role of assessors their involvement, and hence potential for learning, is across the entirety of this LOA task. We argue this assessment encourages deeper engagement and understanding of the course content and provides the opportunity for negotiated understanding. With each subsequent task and therefore engagement, the student is given the opportunity to better understand the content by viewing it from a slightly different perspective. These multiple perspectives allow the student to view the content in a multitude of different ways. Placed into the unfamiliar role of assessor, students adapted their engagement with the course content from a superficial cursory overview to a deep and detailed analysis over the course of the six tasks. Student feedback suggests that they find the process both demanding and rewarding, and reflects a recognition of the type of learning and engagement that they have achieved.

Keywords:

Learning Oriented Assessment, student engagement, lifelong learning, feedback, self-determined assessment.