PEER EVALUATIONS

I'VE LOST THE COUNT OF HOW MANY PEER EVALUATIONS WE HAVE DONE...!

But why so many peer evaluations?

I have searched on the Internet some information about the benefits of peer evaluations in order to understand why they are so important in our class methodology. 

Firstly, I would like to highlight a sentence which says: "Group work can be more successful when students are involved in developing the assessment process." I totally agree with this statement because I strongly believe that if the students are who have taken part in the group activity, the teacher can not assess with precision all the groups involved in the task, so the assessment by the students should be fairer. Furthermore, this involves critical thinking and a deeper approach to learning. 

Moreover, I would like to point out some advantages that I consider that have had a positive effect in my learning process:

• Encourages student involvement and responsibility. 
• Encourages students to reflect on their role and contribution to the process of the group work.
• Students are involved in the process and are encouraged to take part ownership of this process.
• Provides more relevant feedback to the students as it is provided by the peers.

That's why I believe that it is really important to introduce peer evaluations in primary schools since developing student's autonomy and responsibility is a crucial factor nowadays. 

However, it also has some disadvantages, and specially I would like to mention one of them: 

• The process has a degree of risk with respect to reliability of grades as peer pressure to apply elevated grades or friendships may influence the assessment.

It is true that for me it was not easy to assess my peers, specially when I had to assess my close friends. However, little by little I realized that I needed to be fair with my marks and separate friendship from university. So that, I made a lot of effort and I put on my teacher hat feeling really proud about myself. 

To conclude, I would like to point out that from my humble point of view the advantages have more importance than the disadvantages. I consider that during this course the peer evaluations that we have done have been really useful. Specially, I would like to highlight when we had to assess our peer's projects because thanks to that, I compile a lot of new ideas from the other projects that can be really useful for my future. Moreover, the feedback from my peers helped us a lot to modify little aspects of the project that we did not take into account when designing it.  

To see the website from where I have extracted the information click here.

A funny image about peer evaluations. Enjoy!