Peer assessments are when another student in the same classes gives feedback either after a practice exercise like a role-play or maybe a peer review for a writing assignment. A positive feature is that it is someone else giving feedback besides the teacher. So, the student may hear another person saying the same thing that the teacher said, which is useful. Also, some people accept criticism better from peers. A weakness is that some peers are not honest and they don’t want to hurt their classmate’s feelings so they are not honest in the feedback.
One way that peer assessments can be used is in a writing activity. If a paper is due in a class, before it is handed to the teacher, the papers can be switched with classmates. Then, the assignment is for the students to give thoughtful feedback to the student on how they can improve the paper. Another less intrusive way is for this to be anonymous and that way students are more apt to give honest feedback.
