Red Ink and Too Many Commas AKA Peer and Self-Assessment

Learning Outcome Two: Peer and Self-Assessment

Peer Assessment is something that I have always hated. In middle school it was sitting across from your partner writing on their paper with red pen while they did the same to yours. In high school it was writing comments for each other on Google Docs; a little less intimidating, but I loathed it nonetheless. With self-assessment, I hated being nit-picky about my own work. I didn't like having to take the time to carefully read through everything that I had taken so much time already to write.

This semester, though, I've learned that peer and self-assessment is more than making sure transitions flow and commas are correctly placed. It's also about making sure that you took what you learned through your research and applied it to your text. Self-assessment is saying, "In my research I learned this, and you can see the evidence of it in my text here." For example, when researching the conventions of fairy-tales I learned that they have a plot, dialogue, and characters. I used all of this in my fairy-tale and it is evidenced by the presence of plot, dialogue, and characters.

I can use these skills in peer assessment as well. If a peer says in their research that a fairy-tale has a plot, dialogue, and characters, but there is no evidence of that in the text, then their research was for nothing.