Self-, peer- and teacher-assessment of student essays

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Self-, peer- andteacher-assessmentof student essays

S A R I L I N D B L O M - Y L Ä N N E , H E I K K I P I H L A JA M Ä K I & TO O M A S KOT K A S University of Helsinki, Finland

A B S T R AC T This study focuses on comparing the results of self-, peer-and teacher-assessment of student essays, as well as on exploringstudents’ experiences of the self- and peer-assessment processes.Participants were 15 law students. The scoring matrix used in the studymade assessment easy, according to both teachers and students alike.Self-assessment was sometimes considered difficult, because thestudents felt it impossible to be objective when considering their ownwork. In peer-assessment, the students found it difficult to be criticalwhen assessing the essay of a peer. The students found it easier to assesstechnical aspects of the essays when compared to aspects related tocontent.K E Y WO R D S : e s s ay s, p e e r-a s s e s sment , s co r ing mat r ix ,s e l f -a s s e s smen t , t ea che r-a s s e s sment

Self- and peer-assessment in higher education

The assessment of student learning in higher education has gone througha shift from traditional testing of knowledge towards assessment of learning(Dochy et al., 1999; Segers et al., 2003). An assessment culture aims at assess-ing the acquisition of higher-order thinking processes and competenciesinstead of factual knowledge and low-level cognitive skills, as was the casein a testing culture (Birenbaum and Dochy, 1996; Gulikers et al., 2004). In theassessment culture, there is an emphasis on aligning assessment withinstruction and giving students ample opportunity to receive feedbackfrom their learning. Students should also have an active role in the learningand assessment processes. This requires that students have skills to regulatetheir studying and reflect on their learning results and practices. Further-more, students need to develop strategic learning behaviour in order tochoose the most effective study strategies and practices to deal with thedemands of their learning environments (Biggs, 1999; Boud, 1992;Lindblom-Ylänne and Lonka, 2001; Maclellan, 2004; Segers et al., 2001;

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Segers et al., 2003). However, to change the testing culture into an assess-ment culture, more research is needed on various aspects related to thequality of the new assessment culture (Segers et al., 2003).

Self- and peer-assessment are increasingly used in higher education. Self-assessment refers to the process in which students assess their ownlearning, particularly their achievements and learning outcomes. Peer-assessment, on the other hand, refers to assessment practices in which peersassess the achievements, learning outcomes or performances of their fellowstudents. Self- and peer-assessment are more than students grading theirown or a peer’s work, because the assessments involve students in deter-mining what high-quality learning is in a specific case (Boud, 1995; Brownet al., 1997; Dochy et al., 1999; Topping, 2003). Both self- and peer-assessment can be considered as learning tools, because they are part of alearning process where different skills are developed. It is claimed that it isbeneficial for students’ learning to be involved in giving and receivingfeedback because it enhances the development of skills required forprofessional responsibility, judgement and autonomy, and because itemphasizes the responsibility of the students in the learning and assess-ment processes. Peer-assessment can further act as an exercise in whichstudents can both practise assessment and observe how other studentsevaluate the results of learning (Boud, 1995; Brown et al., 1997; Dochy etal., 1999; Gale et al., 2002; Hanrahan and Isaacs, 2001; Magin andHelmore, 2001; Orsmond et al., 1996; Segers et al., 2001; Topping, 2003).Self- and peer-assessment can be either summative, thus concentrating onjudging learning results to be correct or incorrect or assigning a quantita-tive grade, or formative, if they concentrate on in-depth qualitative assess-ment of different kinds of learning results (Topping, 2003). In particular,peer-assessment should be formative in nature in order to enhance learning(Gale et al., 2002; Sluijsmans et al., 2002), because summative peer-assessment can undermine cooperation between students (Boud, 1995).

When analysing the accuracy of self- and peer-assessment (students’own assessments), teachers’ ratings are usually considered as the referencepoint (Magin and Helmore, 2001; Topping, 2003). However, there isevidence that teacher-assessments vary considerably (Topping, 2003; Maginand Helmore, 2001) and that comparison between teachers’ and students’marks can be misleading because of different understandings of assessmentcriteria (Orsmond et al., 1996, 1997, 2000, 2002). Study success and studyphase have been shown to be related to the reliability of self-assessment(Boud, 1995; Dochy et al., 1999). Good students seemed to have atendency to underrate their performance, whereas weaker students tendedto overrate their performance (Dochy et al., 1999; Lejk and Wywill, 2001).Dochy et al. (1999) further showed that self-assessment skills seemed to

A C T I V E L E A R N I N G I N H I G H E R E D U C AT I O N 7(1)

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develop during different phases of the studies, because advanced studentscould predict their performance better than novices.

The accuracy of self-assessment seems to vary according to the focus ofassessment. A review of research on self-assessment which concerns quali-tative analysis of learning products, such as essays, shows that students arevery accurate in grading their own essays (Dochy et al., 1999). In contrast,however, according to Topping (2003), self-assessed grades tend to behigher than staff grades. Taken together, assessment of one’s own perform-ance and behaviour seems to be more unreliable than assessing one’s ownlearning products. Furthermore, critical analysis of one’s performanceappears to be more difficult than evaluating a peer’s performance in a group(Goldfinch, 1994; Segers and Dochy, 2001). There is also evidence thatstudents overestimate their capabilities in self-assessment in addition tooverestimating their performance, as compared with teacher-assessments(Zoller and Ben-Chaim, 1997). Furthermore, self-assessment whichconcentrates on effort instead of achievement has been shown to beparticularly unreliable (Topping, 2003).

All this demonstrates that there is contradictory evidence as to thereliability and validity of self-assessment. The same can be said for peer-assessment, too (Brown et al., 1997; Segers and Dochy, 2001; Magin andHelmore, 2001; MacKenzie, 2000; Topping et al., 2000; Topping, 2003).It seems that students and teachers still appear to have different under-standings of individual assessment criteria, despite the inclusion of verbaland written briefings before the start of the assessment process (Orsmondet al., 1996, 1997, 2000) and that this suggests that further research isnecessary in order to explore these assessment practices. There have beenvarious attempts to address these problems. There is, for example, evidencethat application of specific criteria (Miller, 2003), transparency in assess-ment processes (Rust et al., 2003; Taras, 2001) and good instructions andtraining enhance assessment skills of students (Sluijsmans et al., 2002) canhelp, and also that the use of a scoring matrix may be helpful (Buchy andQuinlan, 2000). However, when exploring assessment practices further, itis important to ensure that the issue of the stress and discomfort thatstudents have reported when having their work marked by a peer is takeninto account (Hanrahan and Isaacs, 2001; Pope, 2001).

Given the need to explore such assessment practices further, the case studypresented here aims to shed light on self-, peer- and teacher-assessment inthe context of the marking of student essays. In particular, we seek to furtherexplore whether the use of a matrix might enhance the accuracy of self- andpeer-assessment of essays. Given the negative experiences that students havereported with regard to peer-assessment, another aim of our research is to explore the perceptions and experiences of students in relation to

L I N D B L O M - Y L Ä N N E E T A L . : E S S A Y A S S E S S M E N T

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peer-assessment in particular. We also seek to explore how both students andteachers perceive their experiences in relation to these practices.

Method

ParticipantsThe participants in this study were 15 law students who were attending aproblem-based course ‘The History of Law’ in the spring of 2002. Of these,only one was a male student. Five of these students were first-year students,six were second-year students and four were more advanced students.Eleven students answered a questionnaire. There were two teachers in thecourse, each tutoring a group of seven or eight students.

MaterialsThe ‘History of Law’ course was designed according to the principles ofproblem-based learning (e.g. David et al., 1999; Savin-Baden, 2000). Thethree-week intensive course consisted of three four-hour tutorials. Thetrigger material of the course consisted of two written problems associatedwith European legal history; the second problem was based on the first one.Throughout the course the students wrote learning journals. At the begin-ning of the course, the students were given both oral and written instruc-tions about how to write the journals. In the lengthy written instructions,the idea and purpose of writing a learning journal was explained to thestudents, and they were advised to write regularly, aim at critical and ‘deep-level thinking’, and to include their personal views, experiences andfeelings and to justify their own views and comments.

The journals were not graded, but the critical essays which studentswrote on the basis of the learning journals were given grades. Students hadto ‘transform’ their lengthy journals into 10-page essays during the fourweeks after having written the journals. The transformation called for activeelaboration of what they had learned in the course, pulling together theessentials, and the formation of their own critical view of the subject matter.The students were given instructions about how to transform their learningjournals into critical essays and told the purpose of the task. The studentsreceived the assessment criteria at the beginning of the course in the formof a matrix (see more later in this article).

ProceduresThree people graded each critical essay. First, the student graded her or hisown essay. Second, the student graded an essay of one of their peers. Third,the teacher graded all essays. The students were provided with ampleopportunities to discuss and ask questions about the criteria during the


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course. They also used ‘empty’ versions of the matrix when assessing theirown and a peer’s essays (Table 1).

The self-, peer- and teacher-assessments were carried out independentlyof each other. The assessment procedure was blind. First, the studentsreturned their critical essays with their own self-assessment to the teacherand the copy of the essay to one peer who was randomly selected to be therater. The self-assessment matrices were not shown to peers, and theprocedure was such that the students would not assess their peer’s essayreciprocally. Furthermore, the teachers did not go through the self- andpeer-assessment results before first having assessed the essays themselves.Two weeks were reserved for the assessment procedure. Each criterion wasscored in a four-point scale from ‘fail’ to ‘excellent’. The final grade was themean score of self-, peer- and teacher-assessment. However, the teachersinformed the students at the beginning of the course that they would not


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Table 1 The scoring matrix and the criteria for self-, peer- and teacher-assessment

Assessment Excellent grade Good grade Satisfactory Failcriterion grade

Key issues and Relevant issues Most relevant Mistakes and Severe mistakesthemes included included issues included irrelevant facts and irrelevant

included facts

Coherent Thorough Understanding Some No generalgeneral picture understanding of of how events understanding of picture formed

how events are are linked how events arelinked linked

Independent Independent Some Little Nothinking thinking and independent independent independent

analytic approach thinking thinking thinking

Critical thinking Critical evaluation Attempts at Very little effort No effort inand thinking critical evaluation in critical critical evaluation

evaluation

Use of literature Several Includes Only ‘the main No references,references, active references other reference’ exceptsearch of than ‘the main discussionsreferences reference’

Appearance Tidy, accurate Tidy, some Untidy, clear Untidy,use of references inaccuracies in inaccuracies in inaccurate use

the use of the use of of referencesreferences references

Length 9–11 pages One page too Two pages too More than 2long or short long or short pages shorter or

longer



share ‘the final decision’ concerning the grade (which they fortunately didnot have to do). This was done in order to avoid conscious over- or under-marking of one’s own or a peer’s essays. A maximum of two ‘fails’ wasallowed in order for the student to pass the course.

Data collection and analysesOne week after the course the two teachers of the course were interviewedby the first author. The semi-structured interviews concentrated on theteachers’ experiences of the use of the matrix and on their experiences ofthe use of self- and peer-assessment. The students were sent a questionnaireone month after the course in which they were asked about their experi-ences of the use of the matrix, self-, peer- and teacher-assessment, and ofthe process of writing learning journals and transforming them into criticalessays. All questions were open-ended. The first author constructed boththe interview questions and the questionnaire. The analyses of the teachers’interviews and the students’ open-ended answers were conducted in twostages, but separately from each other. First, the aim was to identify all vari-ation in the teachers’ and students’ experiences. After that, categories ofdescription were formed on the basis of teachers’ and students’ answers.Second, the categories, which were formed during the first stage, were usedto classify all the answers to ensure that they captured the full variation ofthe data. The first author was responsible for the analyses, which werecarried out immediately after the interviews and after the questionnaireshad been returned.

Results

Experiences of the writing processBoth the students and the teachers considered the idea of transforming thelearning journals into critical essays as worthwhile. There were no draft-liketexts, and the overall quality of the essays was good. The students had onlypositive comments of the writing process. In general, the writing process wasexperienced as both demanding and rewarding. Out of the 11 students whoanswered the questionnaire, six emphasized that the most difficult aspect wasto transform the learning journals into the critical essays. Moreover, thestudents considered the demands for independent and critical thinking asparticularly challenging. Four of these six students also mentioned that thelimited length of the essay caused difficulties in the writing process. Thefollowing excerpt well represents the students’ experiences:

It was a lot of work and I’m very pleased with my accomplishment. I reallylearned. Most difficult for me was to transform the learning journal into a criticalessay because of the length constraint. (Student 1, a second-year female student)


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Comparisons among the results of self-, peer- andteacher-assessmentComparisons among the results of self-, peer- and teacher-assessmentshowed that they were quite similar to each other. The mean scores of self-, peer- and teacher-assessment in each criterion is presented in Figure 1.

The comparisons showed that there were fewer differences among self-, peer- and teacher-assessment in the three more technical criteria ofthe matrix (the last three) than in the criteria related to the context and thedepth of processing knowledge. The students’ and the teacher’s responseswere broadly similar on the scores for the use of literature and on the scoresfor the length. Furthermore, the students themselves and the teacher wereunanimous on the score for appearance, but the peers were more critical.In the content- and process-related aspects of the matrix, there were moredifferences. Concerning the scores for key issues included in the essays, andthe scores for coherence of the general picture formed, there were onlyminor differences. The biggest differences were among scores for inde-pendent and critical thinking. On these two criteria, the peer gave thehighest and the teacher the lowest scores.

Experiences of self- and peer-assessmentIn general the teachers’ experiences of the triadic assessment procedurewere very positive. They thought that the use of both the matrix and self-and peer-assessment in addition to the teacher’s assessment worked verywell. The students’ experiences of self-assessment varied. The experienceswere evenly divided into three categories. Four students considered


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11.5

22.5

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key i

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gene

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indep

ende

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critic

al

litera

ture

lengt

h

appe

aran

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self

peer

teacher

Figure 1 Mean scores of self-, peer- and teacher-assessment in eachassessment criterion of the scoring matrix (N = 15)



self-assessment to be easy. The following excerpt is representative of thesestudents’ experiences:

It was very easy to assess one’s own work. Some students might try to givehigher grades in the self-assessment to receive a higher grade, but I cannot dothis. I know very well my own skills. I want to be honest in self-assessment.(Student 3, a second-year female student)

Three students regarded self-assessment as being both difficult and easy.These students felt that it was easy to assess the technical aspects of theirown essay, but much more difficult to assess the content-related criteria.Furthermore, three students considered self-assessment as difficult, particu-larly because they felt it was impossible to be objective. These studentsthought that self-assessment easily becomes more critical than peer-assess-ment. Student 4 compared the results of her self- and peer-assessment andfound the following differences:

It is always difficult to evaluate yourself without being too critical. However,you cannot be objective when assessing yourself. Thus, I think that my self-assessment is more critical than my peer-assessment. (Student 4, a second-yearfemale student)

The students’ experiences of assessing their peers also varied. Themajority of the students considered peer-assessment to be easy, mainly fortwo reasons. First, all students had already written their own essay beforeassessing their peer’s essay. Thus, they had studied and reflected upon thetheme of the essay thoroughly. This is how one student reflected on peer-assessment:

It was very interesting to read what and how another student had written. Peer-assessment wasn’t very difficult. I had already written my own essay and hadthought and reflected upon the content and the writing process a lot. (Student5, a second-year female student)

Four students had noticed that it was more difficult to be critical in peer-assessment than in self-assessment, but, in general, they considered peer-assessment to be easy. Three students also mentioned difficulty in assessingpeers’ essays in depth, because they had not always read the same referencesas their peer. Four students had experienced similar difficulties in peer-assessment as in self-assessment. More precisely, they thought that it waseasy to assess the technical aspects and more difficult to assess the content-related criteria. Being assessed by one’s peer was a positive experience forall students. In general, the students thought that their peer had been fairand they trusted the peer’s assessment. The following excerpt illustrates thestudents’ experiences:


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I felt good that a peer, who had gone through the same writing and learningprocess as I had, and who had finished the critical essay, too, assessed my essay.By applying peer-assessment, students’ points of view are taken into account.By this I mean that another student knows what kind of grades we expect toreceive on the basis of our work. A peer also knows what it was like to studylegal history in the course. (Student 2, a second-year female student)

To conclude, the results showed that both the teachers and the studentshad mostly positive experiences of the assessment processes. The studentsconfronted different kinds of difficulties in self- and in peer-assessment.Some students felt that it was difficult to be objective towards oneself. Onthe other hand, some students found it difficult to be critical towards a peer.In both assessment modes, the students found it easier to assess technicalaspects of the essays when compared to aspects related to content skills. Allstudents felt that a peer’s assessment of their own essay was fair.

Discussion

This study shows that the results of self-assessments were very similar tothe results of peer- and teacher-assessments in the literature extensivelyreviewed by Dochy et al. (1999). This contrasts with Falchikov and Boud(1989), however, who found that self-assessed grades tended to be higherthan staff grades. Furthermore, the results did not confirm the tendency ofover-marking in peer-assessment that was found in previous research(Magin and Helmore, 2001; MacKenzie, 2000; Topping et al., 2000;Topping, 2003).

The specific criteria and good instructions for students seemed toenhance the accuracy of self- and peer-assessment, as was also shown inprevious research (Buchy and Quinlan, 2000; Miller, 2003; Rust et al,2003; Sluijsmans et al., 2002; Taras, 2001). The results of the present studythus differed from those of Orsmond et al. (1996, 1997, 2000) who arguethat not even good instructions can remove differences in ways studentsand teachers understand assessment criteria.

In general, both the teachers’ and the students’ experiences of self- andpeer-assessment were very positive. The students were motivated by bothself- and peer-assessment. They were eager to read a peer’s essay and to beable to compare their own essay with that of another student’s essay. Theseresults were in line with previous research (Hanrahan and Isaacs, 2001;Orsmond et al., 1996; Pope, 2001; Sluijsmans et al., 2002). The problemsof peer-assessment, including difficulty in being objective when assessinga peer and the unfamiliarity with references a peer had used, were alsoshown in Hanrahan and Isaacs’ study (2001). However, previous researchhas reported other problematic aspects which were not found in this study:


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discomfort and stress of having a peer read one’s own paper, fears that peerswould be too critical and experiences that the assessment process was tootime-consuming (Hanrahan and Isaacs, 2001; Pope, 2001).

The study has many limitations: particularly, the number of students wasvery small, there was a gender imbalance, and the students represented onlyone discipline. Therefore, on the basis of these results, no generalizationscan be made. There are also many variables which are involved whenexploring the accuracy of self-assessment. These include factors such asstudy level, student characteristics, learning task, assessment criteria andprocedure, the learning environment, and students’ practice in self-assessment as reflected in cultural self-images regarding self-esteem ingeneral. Given the scope of the research presented here, these factors werenot taken into account and thus form part of the limitations of this study.In future it will be important to compare the results of self-, peer- andteacher-assessment in larger multidisciplinary samples and also to furtherexplore these other variables. However, it is promising that the results ofthe self-, peer- and teacher-assessment were very similar and that students’experiences of self- and peer-assessment were positive. The active role ofstudents in the assessment process – a key requirement of the assessmentculture – cannot be accomplished if students lack motivation or positiveattitudes towards self- and peer-assessment.

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Biographical notesS A R I L I N D B L O M-Y L Ä N N E is Professor of Higher Education and Director of the Centrefor Research and Development of Higher Education at the University of Helsinki. Herresearch interests include teaching, learning and assessment in higher education aswell as different learning environments.

Address: Faculty of Behavioural Sciences, P.O. Box 9, 00014 University of Helsinki,Finland. [email: [email protected]]

H E I K K I P I H L A JA M Ä K I is Research Fellow at the Academy of Finland. His researchfocuses on the comparative history of Finnish, European and American law.

Address: Faculty of Law, P.O. Box 4, 00014 University of Helsinki, Finland.

TO O M A S KOT K A S is Assistant of General Jurisprudential Studies at the Faculty of Lawat the University of Helsinki. His research interests lie within the field of legal historyand legal philosophy.

Address: Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, P.O. Box 4, 00014 University ofHelsinki, Finland.


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Self-, peer- and teacher-assessment of student essays