Peer assessment in performance studies

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to outline the background to the introduction of peer assessment at the University of Ulster and to report on how the project has operated and developed over the past three years. Initially assessors were drawn from the same student year group as the performers (BMus, year 2). The process was monitored by the authors who subsequently met with each assessment panel to discuss the performances before marks and reports were finalised. In the following years the assessment of second-year performances was conducted by panels of final-year students; this resulted in more objective reporting.

An Evaluation of the Use of Peer Assessment in Higher Education: a case study in the School of Music, Kingston University

“…However, there was no saving in staff time because setting up and managing the process was very time consuming. This phenomenon has also been observed by Brown and Knight (1994) and Hunter and Russ (1996)-in their study of peer assessment in musical performance at Ulster University. The pilot scheme was a failure in terms of its original aim, but there were other, possibly more significant, benefits generated.…”

“…One possible solution to this problem is to integrate fully the learning and assessment processes in performance, which is not the case at present, as visiting tutors carry out all of the teaching but are not involved in the assessment. Hunter and Russ (1996) identify some disagreement between lecturers and students in the marking process, but it does not appear to be so contentious, probably because they use peer assessment at an interim, and formative assessment point where it has less impact on the final degree result.…”

“…Peer assessment has been used in HE for at least 20 years, and the closely related and complementary approach of self-assessment has been researched since the 1930s (Sumner, 1932). Recent studies of the use of peer assessment have been carried out by Conway et al (1993), Falchikov (1988), Hunter and Russ (1996), Oldfield and Mac Alpine (1995) and Searby and Ewers (1996) which tend to focus on the peer assessment of group work.…”

‘I’m not here to learn how to mark someone else’s stuff’: an investigation of an online peer-to-peer review workshop tool

“…Along similar lines, Powell et al (2006) reported 'An important theme of the literature is that a central component of supporting peer review is a rubric students can use to support quality evaluations of each other's work' (1). Hunter and Russ (1996) made a similar point concerning the weighing of the assessment and the perception of fairness by students. While the authors noted a degree of disagreement between students and lecturers in terms of the marking process, this tension was lessened, to an extent, by the fact that peer assessment was used in their particular instance at an 'interim, and formative assessment point where it has less impact on the final degree result' (382).…”

Peer assessment using comparative and absolute judgement

“…Of course, there are many contexts in which the development and understanding of such criteria is an inherently valuable learning activity (e.g. Hunter & Russ, 1996;Sadler & Good, 2006), but there may exist other contexts in which it is desirable or at least pragmatically useful for students to assess peers' work without the need for preliminary training.…”