Perception of university students on peer assessment in writing tasks

Abstract

Peer assessment has beneficial effects on the improvement of a variety of skills. It is particularly useful for enhancing self-regulation and metacognition of writing ability, especially when supportive tools are used to guide assessment and while undergoing training. However, few studies have focused on assessing the usefulness of peer assessment and the most beneficial type of feedback in writing tasks in the mother tongue. In this context, this paper aims to explore the nature of evaluative feedback that university students find most useful for improving the initial version of their texts. It also aims to discover how university students perceive their own self-efficacy as evaluators and the possible influence of previous experience. For this purpose, a total of 186 university students completed an extensive questionnaire created ad hoc, which was previously validated. The results show that university students consider evaluative comments from peers to be useful for improving their writing, especially when they have been reviewed by teachers. The type of feedback which they find most useful are specific local corrections, superimposed on the text, and written in a different colour from the rest of the manuscript. It is also to be observed that university students consider themselves to be self-efficacious in assessing a peer's writing task and, if difficulties arise, they request help. It should be noted that no significant differences in the perception of self-efficacy, irrespective of whether students have participated in previous peer assessment experiences, were observed. Finally, some conclusions are drawn.