Institute for Teaching and Learning Innovation

Peer assessment using a digital tool

  1. Home
  2. Teaching guidance
  3. Assessment
  4. Assessing teams and groups

Peer assessments are a valuable tool to use with student groupwork to encourage students to reflect on and critically evaluate not just their own learning and skill development, but those of their team members as well in preparation for their professional careers. 

  1. Introduction
  2. Process and product
  3. Peer questions
  4. Group questions
  1. Open-ended questions
  2. Formative and summative assessments
  3. Dysfunction in groups
  4. References and further reading

6. Formative and summative assessments

Formative assessment 

Using peer assessment for both formative and summative assessment reflects good practice. Your students should be led to value engagement in peer assessment, and this formative stage is a good opportunity for you to support them to collaborate effectively and prepare critical and constructive feedback for their peers. As it is a reciprocal process, they also learn to accept and respond to the feedback they receive from fellow group members. 

Formative assessment is essential early in the semester, or early within the group task. This formative peer evaluation makes students more actively involved in their learning and can improve their insight of the relevance of the learning content, the outcomes expected of them, and the assessment they undertake (Ndoye, 2017).

Feedback needs to be relevant and purposeful, so the questions you select need to be able to elicit responses that alert group members to their strengths and weakness, how their performance and contribution is being perceived by others, and what changes they can make to improve the way in which they work collaboratively. 

Identifying dysfunction

The formative stage of peer assessment should be your opportunity to identify any groups which are dysfunctional in a task or relational nature. When dysfunction is identified, it is up to you as the course coordinator to implement your planned response to dysfunction within the group (PPL Assessment Policy).

Summative assessment

Peer evaluation can and should be used for summative assessment, using the same or next level questions as were used for the formative assessment. Rather than helping your students learning in the current semester, this assessment will be designed to evaluate what your students have learnt and have put into practice in group work. 

The criteria and questions you use for summative peer evaluation should be focussed on the process of the exercise to elicit the collaboration displayed, and the attitude, knowledge and skills contributions individuals made to the group. 

Peer and self-assessment used for summative assessment can benefit your students by helping to develop:  

  • a desire to want to learn (intrinsic motivation) 
  • a need to learn (extrinsic motivation) 
  • learning by doing (practice, trial and error) 
  • learning through feedback (praise, constructive criticism) 
  • making sense or ‘digesting’ what has been learned. 

(adapted from Deakin Learning Futures, 2023)  

Weighting team or group marks for individuals

Both Division of points and Scale questions can be used to calculate a factor for weighting overall Group or Team marks.  

Peer and self-assessment questions require some analysis of the collated marks. eLearning offers insight to the strategy at  PAF Formula and Moderation Overview. eLearning advise that the PAF should only be used to adjust individual students’ results if the process has been clearly explained to students and included in the Course Profile.