Student-led peer marking criteria

Learning by working with peers is a key to student learning. This may involve working cooperatively or collaboratively to address a problem and in this piece we refer to groups working collaboratively on a problem. Group working can present problems for students if some group members dominate the discussions and decision making or others in the group are seen as ‘freeriders’ and take a back seat. The approach asks the group itself to develop a set of criteria for assessing peer contributions. For each criteria, students are asked to define what a contribution that would be awarded excellent would look like and then define what would lead to the award of a fail grade. The task actively engages students in thinking about how to work together as a group. Revisiting the criteria during the course of the module gives space for reflection on the way that the group is working.