Peer Learning and Assessment

Peer feedback and critique is integral to the creative practice of studio‐based textile designers. In a creative learning context, how do students perceive the role of peer feedback and critique? What conditions do students identify as being important to stimulating creativity in a collaborative peer feedback and critique‐driven learning environment?This article highlights research conducted in one undergraduate textile design programme of an urban Australian university based on a small‐scale designed learning intervention. Our study set out to explore: (1) what students thought about creativity; (2) the conditions which supported its development; and (3) the role of peer learning and critique in the learning experience of design students in a studio‐based environment. Qualitative data were collected from students about their views on creativity, peer learning and the intersection of these two areas both prior to and after the intervention. Staff observations and reflections were also explored. Findings include an increased awareness of the role of peer learning in the creative process for the majority of students. For staff, important revelations unfolded about the role of the group in peer learning and critiques, the elusive nature of creativity itself, the inherent nature of creative disciplines, and the importance of particular physical and mental environment(s) in creative studio‐based learning and teaching.This study highlighted that studio‐based learning environments (involving peer feedback and critique as a critical component of the creative process) need to consider the group dynamic at play and carefully design learning interventions accordingly.

Teamwork and collaborative problem solving competencies are important 21st century skills and considered key graduate attributes for employability and lifelong learning (e.g., Csapó & Funke, 2017). For students to develop collaborative skills and competencies, group work and peer learning are widely-used approaches in higher education. Effective teamwork skills are often implicitly taught and notoriously disliked by students for many reasons including freeriding (social loafing), member dominance or disengagement. Well-functioning teams are underpinned by social-affective dimensions of group work such as respect for reviewers (Carless & Boud, 2018) and social cohesion (Bakhtiar et al., 2018). To positively influence group cohesion and develop team skills, formative peer evaluation of team members’ contributions have been shown to effectively support student agency in this process (Stenalt 2021, Sridharan et al., 2018). This case study explores the affordances of the digital peer review tools Feedback Fruits and Peer Assess Pro to facilitate feedback processes for the successful completion of high-stakes capstone group projects. Bachelor of Science students engage with anonymous team member evaluations of task completion as well as self-evaluation of team skills. To aid a major curriculum transformation at our university towards relational pedagogies, we embarked on an iterative and deliberate approach to scaling peer feedback. The approach aligns with educational design research integrating research and design processes for theoretical and practical outcomes (McKenney & Reeves, 2012, p. 76). Specifically, we aimed to understand 1) the student perception of technology facilitated peer feedback as learning for improved outcomes and raised self-awareness of teamwork skills, and 2) provide a non-threatening environment that enabled personal and collective agency for students as providers and receivers of feedback underpinned by Bandura’s (2001) social cognitive theory and human agency. Applying Bandura’s notion to group work, student agency can be enacted through a learner’s capacity to self-reflect on own capabilities (personal agency) as well as socially coordinated and interdependent efforts towards desired outcomes (collective agency). Questionnaire data on self-regulation (N=42) confirmed the usefulness of peer evaluation of team members’ contributions. However, only half of the students thought that peer feedback positively impacted group coherence and effectiveness such as time management, quality of submissions, or their own performance. Feedback and self-reflections on students’ own strengths and weaknesses were found to be empowering and generally supported team effectiveness. This was also evident from students’ comments (N=110) within the Feedback Fruits tool where students rated their self- and peer efficacy on six criteria: initiative, engagement, contribution, ideas and communication, focus, and harmony. We identified issues with timeliness and active engagement of the feedback received requiring further iterations of purposefully designed rubrics for intended learning outcomes. The impact of peer feedback on perceived self- and collective efficacy is highly complex and influenced by personal as well as sociocultural values (Bandura, 2001, p. 14). Our emphasis on feedback as a learning-centred process under controlled conditions (technology enhanced with clear rubrics) has shown that students can make the information work for themselves and their teams to improve high-stakes group project outcomes. Importantly, in agreement with Molloy et al. (2019), the development of feedback literacy helps to build academic skills, supports self-regulation and acknowledges feedback as a reciprocal process for future employability.

This study investigates institutional support for talent development in community colleges of Madhesh Pradesh, Nepal, focusing on employees’ insights and gender-based differences. Grounded in Human Capital Theory, the research explores how institutional practices affect employee insight of talent development. A descriptive and exploratory design was employed, drawing data from 205 teaching faculties using a structured questionnaire. Quantitative analyses, including regression and ANOVA, revealed a statistically significant model explaining variance in employee insights. Peer learning emerged as the strongest positive predictor, while recognition and reward systems showed a significant but negative relationship, indicating potential gaps between institutional efforts and employee expectations. Gender-based analysis revealed males aligned more with growth opportunities and recognition practices, whereas females favored peer learning and feedback mechanisms, with peer learning showing the most significant gender disparity. Other institutional practices such as workshop participation and inclusive work environments were found statistically insignificant, suggesting inadequacies in implementation. The study highlights the need for more inclusive, transparent, and evidence-based talent development strategies. It also identifies gaps in current practices and emphasizes the importance of peer learning and gender-responsive frameworks. Limitations include the study’s cross-sectional design, reliance on self-reported data, and exclusion of non-binary perspectives, underscoring the need for broader, more inclusive future research. Keywords: talent development, institutional support, peer learning, gender differences, community college

Integrating peer instruction and peer assessment with competency-based four-step approach: effectiveness on wound dressing skill acquisition and motivation among nursing students

Peer assessment and feedback is encouraged to enhance students' learning. The aim of this study was to quantitatively and qualitatively analyse pre-clinical and clinical dental students' written peer feedback provided as part of a continuous, formative and structured peer assessment protocol. A total of 309 Year-2 and Year-5 dental students were invited to participate in a peer assessment and peer feedback protocol. Consenting volunteer students were trained to observe each other whilst working in the skills laboratory (Year-2) and in the dental clinic (Year-5). Subsequently, they followed a structured protocol of peer assessment and peer feedback using specially designed work-based forms during a complete academic year. The content of their written feedback was coded according to the UK General Dental Council domain, sign (positive or negative), specificity (task specific or general), and grouped into themes. A total of 108 participants (40 Year-2 and 68 Year-5) completed 1169 peer assessment work-based forms (516 pre-clinical and 653 clinical); 94% contained written feedback. The large majority (82%) of Year-2 feedback represented the clinical domain, 89% were positive, 77% were task specific, and they were grouped into 14 themes. Year-5 feedback was related mostly to Management and Leadership (37%) and Communication (32%), 64% were positive, 75% task specific, and they were clustered into 24 themes. The content of the feedback showed notable differences between Year-2 and Year-5 students. Senior students focused more on Communication and Management and Leadership skills, whilst juniors were more concerned with clinical skills. Year-5 students provided 13% negative feedback compared to only 2% from Year-2. Regulatory focus theory is discussed to explain these differences. Both groups provided peer feedback on a wide and different range of themes. However, four themes emerged in both groups: efficiency, infection control, time management and working speed. A structured peer assessment framework can be used to guide pre-clinical and clinical students to provide peer feedback focused on different domains, and on contrasting signs and specificities. It can also present an opportunity to complement tutors' feedback.

Peer Assessment plays an important role in facilitating a collaborative learning environment among students in Higher Education. It can be an effective platform for Team-Based activities and to promote cooperative learning. Such approaches are being introduced at different curricula levels as students who engage with cooperative learning tend to exhibit higher academic achievement, better critical thinking and deeper understanding of teaching contents. They can also build more positive and supportive relations with peers which is a crucial organizational skill. However, very few studies have investigated the use of peer assessment for informing cooperative learning in Higher Education. Can Peer Assessment be used to promote cooperative learning among students in Higher Education? This paper explores a second year undergraduate module titled ‘Design, Construction and Test’ in the Department of Electronic Engineering at York. This module has a Peer Review component in one of the assessments. A total of 12 groups participated in this module and using content analysis, their peer review reports were analyzed. The findings highlighted five key factors that contribute towards cooperative learning: delegation, team leadership, attendance, active engagement and effective communication. Groups which implemented these elements within their teams experienced effective collaboration among team members whereas groups which experienced conflicts among peers reflected on the lack of some of these. Peer Assessment gives students an efficient platform to understand the benefits of cooperative learning. To facilitate collaboration in an effective manner, educators must emphasize these factors when exercising Team-Based activities in their curricula.

This chapter provides an overview of the use of online and Web-based learning technologies as formative and summative assessment. Peer learning and assessment, provision of feedback to students, online tests and quizzes, plagiarism detection systems, and audience response systems are all examined with a view to highlighting best practice and demonstrating that online assessment must still follow sound pedagogy to be both valid and valued by instructors and students alike.

The study explored the viewpoints of two groups of mentors – subject and pedagogy – on their roles in a 12-month problem-based learning (PBL) academic development program at a Danish university. Q methodology analysis from 49 mentors revealed consensus on certain generic characteristics of good mentorship, namely active listening, constructive feedback, and mutual respect. Significantly distinguished collective opinions on good mentorship were identified through three factors: 1) providing advice using one’s own teaching experience, 2) probing mentee self-reflection and responsibility, and 3) co-creating and mediating. While most pedagogy mentors were loaded on Factor 2, emphasizing a social-constructivist approach centred on mentees, subject mentors’ views differed across all three distinct collective opinions. Factor 1 participants consisted mainly of subject mentors who have had no pedagogical background, with some reporting similar views to pedagogy mentors. Factor 3 included five female subject mentors who highlighted the importance of knowledge co-creation, reciprocity, and peer learning – an approach called for in the mentorship literature. The results suggest that structured mentorship preparation programs are needed, in addition to professional learning communities, for pedagogical and subject mentors to work collaboratively.

Studies indicate that group work accompanied by the cooperative learning elements of Individual accountability and structured independence among group members enhances student achievement. This article illustrates the implementation of a specific type of cooperative learning project called group investigation. The project is based on Slavin's (1995) six‐stage model of group investigation. It was implemented in a fourth‐semester college‐level French class and would be suitable for third‐ and fourth‐year high school French classes. The model could be adapted for Spanish or other language classes.

Aligning peer assessment with peer learning for large classes: the case for an online self and peer assessment system

The global higher education is experiencing a shift of traditional, instructor-based models of instruction towards the more interactive, learner-based pedagogies. This research paper examines the peer learning among the Master students of University Campus, Kirtipur in terms of their frequency, typologies, determinants, and correlation with academic performance. They used a cross-sectional survey design where the sample comprised of 112 respondents who were participants of the Social Work, Rural Development, and Health Education programmes, and were administered questionnaires that were analyzed using statistical tools. Findings show that peer learning has a high rating as a strategy to create social interaction (Mean = 4.37) and also to prepare and do exams but has a more variable rating on deep conceptual understanding (Mean = 3.64). The use of technology, role of learning and the notion of instructor support showed that there were differences of discipline and demography. Social Work students were found to exhibit more organized interaction based on formal platforms (68.2% using Google Classroom) and Health Education students had a preference towards less formal interaction which was more peer-centered. Chi-square tests showed that the subject stream and platform choice were statistically significant (χ 2 = 28.76, p =.001) and that the perceived grade improvement were statistically significant ( 2 = 31.17, p =.001). The research confirms the socio-affective benefits of peer learning and highlights the need to implement them in a more systematic way to better cognitive outcomes and guide evidence-based educational policy.

In the recreation sector there is concern for ensuring that students and practitioners have adequate knowledge and skills to contribute to its growth and sustainability. While other researchers have identified the importance of personal attributes (i.e., ‘soft’ skills) for entry-level practitioners, there has been limited exploration of how peer assisted learning might contribute to preparing recreation students for their future professional practice. Recreation students from three different courses who were involved in a leisure education-based peer learning project participated in the study. Three themes were constructed to reflect students’ perceptions: (1) benefits of peer learning for preparing for future practice, 2) practice for real life, and (3) factors impacting abilities to facilitate peer learning. The results are discussed in relation to the role of peer learning or mentoring in cultivating personal and professional growth and development in and for the recreation sector.

Objectives Medical schools worldwide have increasingly included EBM principles in undergraduate curriculum either in different courses or in one specific course. In Italy complete and systematic data on EBM teaching in medical schools are lacking. Indirect information comes from a survey conducted by GIMBE Foundation on more than 600 students who applied for a scholarship to acquire Evidence-based Practice core curriculum. Most of respondents outlined that EBM is mainly taught in occasional lectures or seminars, without any searching and/or critical appraising of literature. In 2017 GIMBE Foundation assigned a research grant to the Italian Secretariat of Medical Students (SISM) to evaluate teaching of EBM in medical schools and assess the real implementation of syllabi through structured surveys among students. Method The first phase of the study has been developed in 4 steps. Step 1: identification and inclusion of all Italian medical degree courses, excluding English taught ones. Step 2: detection of information sources to analyse, namely the core curriculum designed by the Italian Council of Medical Deans, the core curriculum of each medical school, medical schools’ annual return (‘Scheda Unica Annuale – SUA’) and syllabi of single courses. Step 3: keywords identification. A high sensitive strategy has been used, searching each document for the following keywords: ‘medicina basata’, ‘evidenza’, ‘evidenze’, ‘evidence’, ‘letteratura’, ‘prove di efficacia’, ‘EBM’. Step 4: data entry. Occurrences have been recorded in a database including the following fields: medical school and degree course, keyword (present, absent, not relevant, SUA section where keyword occurred, SUA page number where keyword occurred, sentence where keyword occurred, specific EBM course (yes/no). Duplicate and not relevant records have been excluded. Results 40 eligible medical schools were identified, with a total of 46 medical degree courses. At this stage of the study only the core curriculum of both the Italian Council of Medical Deans and single Medical Schools as well as SUA have been analysed. Syllabi of single courses will be examined in the next months. The core curriculum of the Italian Council of Medical Deans includes all components of EBM core curriculum in its elementary teaching units (even if not structured). As for the single medical schools, only 4 ore curricula have been retrieved and therefore they have been excluded from further assessment and analyses. In medical schools’ annual return (SUA) only 8 degree courses with a specific EBM course were identified; there is a variable keywords’ occurrence in SUA of different degree courses (mean 3.8±SD 2.6, range 1–11). Conclusions Although educational aims reported in the elementary teaching units of core curriculum of the Italian Council of Medical Deans are coherent with EBM core curriculum, SUA only occasionally include EBM. The 8 EBM specific courses identified in SUA seem to be due more to local initiatives rather than resulting from a systematic introduction of EBM in the Italian undergraduate medical education. Theme Tools and concepts that are basic and central to the teaching and practising of evidence-based medicine.

Teacher networks and communities have played an important role in teacher professional development. In such contexts, teachers often receive extensive feedback from peers as part of social learning. However, many teachers have difficulty identifying essential information from a large amount of peer feedback, which may impede self-reflection and peer learning. This study proposes the use of computer-assisted visual analytics of peer feedback to address this challenge. A visualisation-based analytical dashboard was designed and applied to help teachers analyse and reflect on peer feedback in a lesson study community for Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) development. Primary school teachers participated in the lesson study, in which they collaborated to discuss lesson plans, observe recorded lessons, and give peer ratings and comments using an online platform. By comparing the performance between those using the analytical dashboard and others not using it, the results show that the approach has promising effects on improving teachers’ TPACK as reflected in the lesson plans and their perceived confidence in TPACK. The implications of the findings are also discussed.

The AI-powered smart classrooms for C-PBL to enhance mobile and virtual learning technology, or C-PBL mobile and virtual learning are based on the integration of artificial intelligence and virtual reality technologies with problem-based learning and cooperative learning with an attempt to enhance students’ analytical thinking and curiosity. Thereby, students are encouraged to do activities in small groups and use analytical thinking skills to distinguish problems in a systematic manner, which is believed to enable them to create their own bodies of knowledge from the problem-solving process in those situations or problems. The results of this research are consistent with the hypotheses, as it is found that the C-PBL mobile and virtual learning system is considered a learning tool that can be practically applied in cooperative problem-based learning processes through virtual smart classrooms in order to promote students’ analytical thinking and curiosity in learning. Meanwhile, it is believed that the C-PBL mobile and virtual learning system herein also enables students not only to create their own bodies of knowledge after doing small-group activities in virtual environments but also to receive brand-new knowledge as to their own abilities from experiential learning. However, there are still some research gaps in this study that need to be further addressed in the future. For instance, future studies should explore a wider scope of application by doing surveys with more varied populations and broader educational environments so as to confirm the validity and clarity of study results. Therefore, the findings in this study are considered merely the findings derived from a pilot study and can be used as just a guideline for future development.