Peer+Evaluation+Research

=Peer Evaluation Research=

[|EFL Classroom Peer Assessment]
 * Dan Goldberg**

Saito, H. (2008). EFL classroom peer assessment: Training effects on rating and commenting. Language Testing, 25(4), 553-581.

This article was written by Hidetoshi Saito who has been a professor at multiple universities in Japan usually in the engineering field. In this paper, he is looking at how training affected peer assessments and comments in an English as a Foreign Language class. Quoting some other papers, Saito writes about how peer assessment encourages learning by forcing students to observe others' performances. Also, he says that students develop a sense of shared responsibility. I agree with him on both accounts and think that these are two benefits of peer evaluation.

His studies looked at how training students to evaluate effected the end results. In the end his studies were largely inconclusive. He stated that from his results, the training made no difference; however, in his conclusion, he says that due to limitations the study was simply inconclusive.


 * Kevin Dickey**

Arnold et al. "Use of Peer Evaluation in the Assessment of Medical Students." __Journal of Medical Education__ (1981): 42.

This article, written by a variety of faculty members from the University of Missouri, examines the use of peer evaluations in assessing the performance of medical students. The study found that the peer evaluations generally have very positive results. The peer evaluations had high correlations to students’ academic performance. This method demonstrated a low enough variability that they could be used across a wide spectrum of students to useable results.

Arnold et al. used a numerical system of rating that asked students to rate fellow medical students on eleven dimensions – attitude, peer relations, reliability, medical information, concepts, skills, maturity, patient rapport, ingenuity, conscientiousness, and integrity. This system is entirely based on numerical inputs, as opposed to a comment-based evaluation. Each of dimension was rated on a scale from 1 to 9, where 1-3 are “unsatisfactory,” 4-6 are “satisfactory,” and 7-9 are “superior.” From this system, ratings from each of the 11 dimensions are averaged to give the student a “final score” of sorts. With moderately low variability between scores, Arnold et al. determined that the peer evaluations were effective and reliable methods for the assessment of medical students.


 * Scarlett Montanaro**

This article dicusses the use of peer evaluation in graduate business programs for group projects. They believe that students have the best insights on other students streghts and weaknesses. They say that peer evalutations are not only useful for data collection but are also helpful as an "intervention" that could improve the "group dynamic" of both students involved.

One problem that they were having was that some students were getting too personal with the evaluations, so to try and stop this, they would give out a sheet (almost like a rubric) at the beginning of the project telling the students what they should be noticing others are doing or not doing during the project. They would then give out the sheets again when the students were actually doing the evaluations. This helped show the students exactly what should be included on peer evaluations and what was considered "personal" and not relating to the project. This helped make the evaluations become more constructive.


 * Jenna Shorkey**

http://bcq.sagepub.com/content/65/1/9.full.pdf+html

Gueldenzoph and Gary L. May "Collaborative Peer Evaluation: Best Practices for Group Member Assessments" __Business Communication Quarterly__ (2002):65-9.

This article looked at the most effective way to perform peer evaluations. Though peer evaluations are found to be extremely valuable and accurate, if the evaluation tends to be more free form, or the questions are worded ambiguously, the evaluation is much less effective due to people being evaluated on their "likability." This article also points out several questions that can be improved to yield better results when being used for evaluations. This should be extremely useful to us in class.


 * Kurt Rose**

This article has a few key points that could be relevant to improving our classes peer reviews.

-Prepare students to provide constructive comments. This means that students should be giving feedback about the student's work and work ethic, NOT the students themselves. These comments should be said in an appropriate tone and not only include negative points, but positive points as well.

-Prepare students to receive negative/polar comments. When the evaluations are over, the students should not feel worthless or that they did a bad job because of the criticism. Keep in mind that there are going to be completely opposite reviews coming from different people.

-Have a practice session. The significance this has is it gives students an idea of the format and what is expected to be heard from them. Instructors could make a sheet of guidelines that students can refer to while writing their reviews.


 * Maggie Castle**

Wright, Karen. "The Chic Critique." __Psychology Today.__(Mar/Apr 2011) p. 54-62

This article was about about giving criticism as feedback. It explains how, well positive feedback is very important too, criticism is what allows people to learn and how we all evolve and grow as human beings. This article focuses on how to give that negative feedback in a way which will be effective. One of the main effects of negative feedback is that the receiver becomes defensive and angry. To be effective in giving your criticism the article provides the “8 rules of effective feedback” which include tips from leading with questions, not to give criticism unless its invited, to make sure you have the authority to do so, not to give feedback when your angry, and know the personalities of the person your giving feedback to and yourself to help effectively word your statements. These tips are focused towards giving helpful criticism to help the recipient be accepting of your advice and to use the advice without feeling attacked, angry, or hurt. I think that this article sheds light on the fact that while some of our peer evaluations gave negative criticism, they probably did not give it in the right way. Maybe they focused on what that person wasn’t doing rather than what they could do to be even better, or maybe their wording of their feedback wasn’t in a tone that would make it accepted towards the receiver to make them want to change.

**Nicolette Nugent** **[|Peer Editing]**

This article about peer editing talked about pros and cons of peer editing. These include that it is a great way to get feedback on your work, but a large portion of the time, these reviews came become useless and biased. The author described what a peer review should include: - how correct the author is using your knowledge of the subject - how interesting and relevent their work is to what they are trying to accomplish -the completeness of the authors references. The review shouldn't contain personal relationship i9nformation, and should stay strictly professional

http://foundationcoalition.org/publications/brochures/2002peer_assessment.pdf
 * Jarrett Almand**

Peer Evaluation Article mainly stated the definition: "a small group of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable." What was stated after that basically talked about (not examples but) how you can "raise the bar" by exposing students to exceptionally good solutions (or bad). I think the reason why this approach was effective because they are analyzing the "perfect" peer evaluation result.


 * Phoenix Rodden**


 * [|peer eval and rotational leadership]**

This study was mostly about the effects of rotational leadership, with an added study on peer evaluations. They used peer evaluations that affected your grade, so there was an increase in cooperation and team cohesion, assumably because the people knew that the others had control over their grades. Overall, the peer evaluations helped the groups.