Abstract:

Nowadays there is a growing awareness that re-thinking assessment in higher education is crucial, because assessment affects students' learning and the quality of teaching (Flores, Veiga Simão, Barros & Pereira, 2015). The idea of students' participation in the assessment processes highlights the value of assessment of learning and assessment for learning (Sambell, McDowell & Montgomery, 2013). This path promotes the acquisition of students' assessment literacy according to a sustainable assessment perspective (Boud & Soler, 2016).
Several studies (Hattie & Timperley, 2007) highlighted the effective impact of feedback on students' learning, and how students actually use received feedback (Evans, 2013). Feedback can be provided by teachers or by peers. The former entails some intrinsic criticalities (Nicol, Thomson, & Breslin, 2014), because it provides students with a passive role and is defined by external criteria (Sadler, 2009), thus resulting as complex and not entirely understandable for students (Falchinov, 2005). The latter, instead, fostered in peer review processes, requires students to provide feedback on the work of one or more peers, while receiving feedback from them, and therefore allow them to review and update their work, based on the feedback given and received.

This article presents the implementation of peer review practices during a module within a master programme in Education studies at the University of Padua in Italy. In this experience, 36 students created a research report on the basis of criteria negotiated with the professor, reviewed three anonymous peers' reports, by giving suggestions for improvement, received peers' feedback on own report and had the chance to develop and update their own work before final submission.

The research questions were:
a) does peer review foster learning processes, by improving students' work?;
b) do the two processes of reviewing/giving feedback and receiving reviews/feedback, both of which are included in peer review processes, have the same impact on students' work?; what are students' perceptions about giving and receiving feedback?

Products developed by the students of the module and some answers of students' questionnaires were analyzed. Results show the effectiveness of such practices with regard to the development of skills related to the aims of the module. Moreover, these results allow us to reflect upon the role of peer reviews with regard to the improvement of teaching and learning practices and assessment at universities. Major changes on reports were structural ones, both in the giving and receiving feedback phase, and this represents an important result for a module which aims at developing students' skills in constructing a research report.

However, to address the second research question, it is important to highlight that students seem to have gained wide learning benefits both during reviewing/giving feedback phase and even more during the receiving reviews/feedback. Students also answered to open ended reflective questions after each phase, so data were integrated also with their perceptions. The majority of students think they have learnt in both phases, identifying different learning benefits gained in the two processes. Moreover, students highlight that reviewing/giving feedback was for them the most complex and, because of that, the most challenging, motivating and engaging activity, which gave them responsibility and fostered critical thinking.

Keywords:

Assessment, Higher Education, peer review, feedback.