When using "Self Assessment" or "Peer Assessment" in your classes, some of you would probably think of issues such as:

• how to prepare students so that they have the ability to assess either their own work or the work of their peers.
• whether it could become part of the process of confidence building of students [we assume that students would try to assess fairly]; and
• how to make it more beneficial to student learning without causing in an unrealistic workload.

For those who are using these practices, do you consider that students could reasonably understand what they were being expected of them and know how to do the self- and peer-assessment? Are students clear about the assessment criteria? Therefore, in response to these, some of you may note that teachers' feedback during the process becomes so important. It serves to clarify students' misconceptions or unrealistic expectations on their work, rather than aiming solely at improving the end product. Anything else?

No matter how one looks at the process, I believe that students' skills in identifying the criteria for successful performance and their ability to make judgments are part of their learning which is so important to them. It must be the focal point of our efforts.

How would you rate this point?

You may share others’ viewpoints on this issue in our Online Forum.