Peer Review & Self-Assessment Double Seminar – 4 December 2017

23 November 2017

CRADLE looks forward to hosting a double seminar exploring peer review and self-assessment on Monday 4 December 2017. Dr Jessica To and Qiyun Zhu, both of the University of Hong Kong, will discuss Chinese students’ experiences of peer involvement across two studies: student engagement in asynchronous cross-cultural online peer review, and the role of peers in mediating self-assessment.

Jessica is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Hong Kong; her research interests include assessment feedback, exemplar use, self-assessment, and issues related to the implementation of formative assessment in higher education. Jessica will discuss the role of peers in mediating the self-assessment processes of first-year undergraduates, drawing on the experiences of eleven students across four faculties. This study explored how peers can assist first-year undergraduates to handle the cognitive, meta-cognitive and social-affective demands of self-assessment, and findings indicate that peer involvement can have multiple impacts on the self-assessment process: for instance, peer discussion on assignment requirements enables students to realise alternative task approaches and clarify key issues in the forethought stage. Jessica will also address the challenges inherent to involving peers in self-assessment.

Qiyun is a PhD candidate in the University of Hong Kong’s Division of English Language Education (supervisor Prof. David Carless). Her doctoral project focuses on Chinese undergraduates’ perceptions of and engagement in peer feedback in academic writing courses, in culturally homogeneous and heterogeneous groupings. Qiyun will discuss her study into Chinese undergraduates’ engagement in an asynchronous online cross-cultural peer review activity, which investigated the interactions of fifteen pairs of Chinese and American students. The study found no significant differences between the self-regulated learning actions of Chinese and American students, while Chinese students additionally reported substantial benefits and generally positive perceptions of the activity. Qiyun will explore how the cross-cultural peer review was managed and structured in terms of task design, teacher guidance and monitoring, and how peer review was configured. She will also address theoretical, methodological and pedagogical implications arising from the study.

Places for the double seminar are filling quickly, so register now!