Following the pandemic, more classes are being offered online, making it crucial for faculty to monitor student development, performance, and general well-being. Tech-enabled peer feedback ensures students stay connected with their instructors through frequent assignments that offer constructive criticism for development.
With students back in classes, the role played by peer feedback remains as important as it did before. It helps students stay engaged with their course material even after they submit their assignments and expand their knowledge on the subject by reviewing their peers’ work.
In this article, we will share the results of a survey that we conducted amongst 400 students using Kritik in their courses to measure the importance of Kritik as an online peer assessment tool.
Let’s begin by looking at some benefits that stood out for students through the peer assessment process.
5 Benefits of the Peer Assessment process that students love
1. Peer learning
Collaborative learning among students culminates in peer-to-peer learning. Kritik enhances student engagement as they get the opportunity to review each other’s work, which adds to their learning.
83% of the students who participated in the survey agreed that they learned by evaluating their peer’s submissions.
2. Exposure to diverse perspectives
Learning becomes more collaborative and engaging when there is a chance to share fresh perspectives and be exposed to different viewpoints. Peer assessment helps fill the learning gaps by seeing how peers approach each problem.
For instance, in Arts courses, students can add to their learning and debate peacefully by getting exposure to peers’ opinions on the same topic. While in STEM courses, there may be only one solution to a problem but multiple ways to get there.
3. Helps build a strong foundation
Students who have a strong educational foundation benefit from learning more and acquire valuable life skills. Collaboration and opportunities to discuss and reflect on the topic help lay a solid foundation for student learning. As the instructor takes on the role of a facilitator, students lean on each other to build on ideas independently. The Kritik survey also indicated that 87% of students found that the Kritik activities helped them learn the course content better.
4. Stay more engaged with the course material
Students are exposed to course concepts multiple times in all the three stages of Kritik: Create, Evaluate, and Feedback. When students participate in peer assessment, learning continues even after they submit their creation. In the Evaluate stage, they gain a deeper understanding of their peers’ significant takeaways, which may not be the same as their own. The Feedback stage gives students the opportunity to share with their evaluator how helpful and motivational the evaluation was.
5. Learn how to give helpful feedback
When students are allowed to engage in the feedback process, they become more aware of what is expected of them and have greater confidence in the evaluation process. Kritik encourages students to evaluate and critique one another's work to provide insightful feedback based on the rubrics.
3 Key Insights that Highlight Students’ Learning Experience with Kritik
Peer evaluation offers students a wide scope of possibilities of measurable value they can use throughout their academic careers and further. Here are some takeaways that contributed to students’ learning experience with Kritik:
1. Kritik helps students build critical thinking skills
Survey results indicated that 82% of students were able to improve their critical thinking skills. Students learned how to give and receive feedback and focus on the rubrics to understand the assignment’s learning objectives.
2. Kritik helps students learn more from peer evaluation
97% of the students responded that they went over each evaluation they received from their peers. They have learned more by evaluating their peer's assessments and projects while exercising critical thinking and decision-making skills.
3. Peer grading is as accurate as the instructor’s grades
The survey has also revealed how Kritik helps students make more informed judgments on the quality of their own and other people's work, with 97% of respondents admitting that they grade their peers' work like their professors would.
Most instructors using Kritik run a calibration activity at the beginning of their course to ensure that the students’ grading adjusts to their own. As students progress through the course, their grading power increases or decreases based on the evaluations they submit to their peers.
Moreover, over 97% of the students responded that they thoroughly go through the evaluations. This could be as many as 3 evaluations per submission received from the Kritik peer assessment tool.
Kritik makes online peer assessment possible!
Students today are very comfortable sharing their thoughts and feedback on the different products and services they use. The same applies to their learning, where they want to make sure that they get the best experience that prepares them for the workforce.
Schedule a demo with Kritik today to implement tech-enabled peer assessment in your courses that foster critical thinking skills among students.
