Designing student peer assessment in higher education: Analysis of written and oral peer feedback

Abstract

Designing student peer assessment in higher education: analysis of written and oral peer feedback Relating it to design features, the present article describes the nature of written and oral peer feedback as it occurred in seven writing courses, each with a different PA design. Results indicate that generally, peer feedback in all courses was focused on evaluation, which is only one of the four feedback functions. Feedback on structure was hardly provided. As it turned out, the differences between the outcomes per course were related to three design features. For PA to yield more adequate feedback we recommend that (1) the assessment is performed in small feedback groups; (2) the written feedback is orally explained and discussed with the receiver; (3) PA takes place at the end as well as at the start of the writing process.