Peer Assessment- Importance and Benefits for Effective Learning and Scoring Good Marks/Grades in Examination

What a wonderful moment! Nothing can be more effective than “Peer Assessment” in the classroom. Students were evaluating solved sample paper answer sheet of their classmates.  Each student evaluated other student’s answer sheet in true sprite. In fact, teacher hesitates to share different level of student’s mistakes directly with him. As teachers, we fear to share hard truth with student. We fear that our open, and direct feedback can have adverse effect on students.  Peer feedback has not adverse effect on students; it has positive effect on students and they take as a challenge to correct themselves for getting better score in the examination.

Peer assessment is an effective tool to impart quality learning in the classroom. Students solved ‘Sample Paper of Social Science as practice in the classroom. Students solved their question paper in 3 hours. They exchanged their answer sheet and evaluated all the answer for 1 hour. It was wonderful experience. They evaluated their peers answer sheets.  Student’s observation was minute and precise. Student gave feedback on widely covered mistakes i.e. from spelling mistakes to sentence formation, and from   formatting problems to quality content (a) Richa has written 2 answer while question consists of 1 mark. (b) Shreya has not given proper space between two words. (3) Anjali has written two much answers for 3 marks question. (d) Anju has written repeatedly same points.

Students minutely assessed their peer answer sheets. Ripunjay has written wrong answer. Question no 23 was from economics (role of education and women empowerment in economic development of a country) but she has written answer from Political Science. We found out several points during “Peer Assessment” Session. An alert learner will convert these shortcomings into great outcome which will surely help board examinee to score good marks in Social Science and other subjects. Students pointed out several mistakes of their classmates during “Peer Assessment Session” which can be corrected and implemented in other subjects also, since so many students committed very common mistakes in their answer sheet.

Key points of Peer Assessment in Social Science:-

  • Language Problems- Accuracy & Fluency
  • Grammatical mistakes
  • Problem in sentence formation
  • Incomplete sentence
  • Meaningless sentence
  • Habit of writing long sentence i.e. without punctuation marks
  • Spelling mistakes
  • Habit of writing either /or while writing answer
    Lack  of understanding the question language
  • Words limits (More than need/Very less content)
  • Either very less words 
  • Or over the limit words

  • Habit of not  writing precise answer
  • Inappropriate points in paragraph
  • Points written but without explanation ( however explanation required)
  • Lack of examples/Irrelevant examples/illustrations

 Benefits of Peer Assessment in Scoring Good Marks/Grades in Exam

Identifying Mistakes in Others Answer sheet and sharing with same age group of learners, motivates all students to set a benchmark for themselves and for improving their past mistakes in next attempt.

While listening to other mistakes from the same age group of learners help them to indentify one’s own mistake. Peer assessment alerts all learners towards all possible mistakes. Peer feedback awakes other learners that these types of mistakes may be or may not be occurred by them during examination.

Students learn a lot when s/he finds his classmates has written appropriate answer of a particular question. Peer gives feedback on all positive and negatives aspects. Peer assessment provides learner an opportunity to learn from mistakes as well as learn from quality content based answer. They can learn following points – (a)  What is parameter of writing a good answer? (b) What are the common mistakes which happen during examination? (c)  What are the basic mistakes which they can avoid during the examination? (d) How to write a good answer?

Peer teaching and peer assessment impart impactful learning experience in the classroom. Peer assessment makes himself alerts and aware while finding out the loopholes/mistakes in other’ answer sheet. Suppose, Mr. Sameer checked Ms. Garima answer sheet and pointed out that Ms. Garima has not written appropriate example in question number 7 and in question number 24, she wrote irrelevant points.  Will this observation help Mr. Sameer/Garima and other classmates in writing correct answer? Of course, it does not only help Garima but also whenever Sameer will attempt to write answer of question type (24), she will try to write relevant points. 

Peer assessment provides learning platform in a friendly environment. Students can laugh on other student’s silly mistake but at inner core student also understands that s/he may also commit same mistake. Generally it is observed that student learns his best when s/he feels something without any pressure.

Rajeev Ranjan