How Peer and Self-Assessment can Enhance Students’ Experience with Assessment in Higher Education: A Practical Description of a Teaching Session

Any kind of assessment has great potential to draw students’ attention. As a parent of a two-year-old girl, I find teaching and learning very natural when we play together. However, as a teacher of nearly hundred students, I find itimportant to use teaching methods that support active and deep learning.Session with peer and self-assessment utilises motivation to facilitate students’learning. Such session helps gain a better understanding of marking, assessment,and teacher’s expectation. This paper describes a teaching session of only 50minutes that effectively incorporates peer and self-assessment for formativepurpose. The students taking part in the peer and self-assessment activity studyat a Sino-British cooperative university where teaching is in English. Followingthe approach of Dangel and Wang (2008), I combined the principles for goodpractice of Chickering and Gamson (1987) with the proposed learning outcomesof Anderson and Krathwohl (2001). Students’ feedback shows that the intendedlearning outcomes can be achieved. Getting marks from peers and marking thework of peers are useful for students’ own learning. As a result, peer and selfassessmentactivities arebeneficial elements for teaching and learning in highereducation. Keywords: Education,peer assessment, self-assessment, assessment, higher education, teaching session, China