Anyone here experienced peer assessments / soft marking?

[Bilby]

I've just left a full time course (Community Welfare) because of peer assessments . For certain assignments students had to grade other students. What tended to happen was that friends would form in groups and basically pass each other. They generally used peer assessments for the most challenging assignments. We had a lot of migrants in the class who didn't really comprehend things all that well. We had the option of leaving group member's names off the assignment if you felt they didn't do the work, but you'd end up being alientated if you did this. I resented the situation that a lot of undeserving people were getting passed becuase no-one wanted to leave anyone's name off. I think it's a deliberate policy of ensuring that as many students as possible pass the course. I know most of TAFE's income is by government grants, which probably have a large migrant/disadvantaged element. I don't have a problem with this, but why make the course academic if it's only academic for some and not for others? Everyone should do the same work to get a pass. I have complained to DETA and I'm waiting on their response, but they were'nt really keen to take it up. Has anyone here experienced anything like this in TAFE or uni?

[Dan Rowden]

Peer assessments? What kind of ridiculous notion is that? How could they think such a thing could actually work? Why not just have self assessments?

[sear]

Bilby,
I used to work for a Fortune 500.
I was hired there in the 1970's.
But by the 1990's, they tried peer review.
I publicly objected to it at the time.
I'm not a Christian. But I observed that Christ taught:
Judge not, lest ye be judged.

Management's reply:

We're not asking you to judge persons.
We're asking you to observe & report performance.

I agree with you.
In the cliquish environment you describe, it's an obvious advantage to the socially popular.

I understand the virtue expected by those that imposed such a scheme.
But reality is more complex than that.

Have you considered taking up welding?

[Katy]

We used it as well in a few of my classes - never exclusively though, but we're doing it on one of my classes this semester and I'm kind of nervous. I'm not really "one of the group" so to speak, so no telling how I'll come out of this. It seems to reward popularity more than ability.

[Pye]

I've been present at these "student-centered" learning techniques at many levels, and during a graduate teaching assistantship, we were modeled and recommended the technique, I even sat through a painful demonstration of this in a graduate seminar in the russian linguists where an entire 90 minutes was given over to what kind of project we were to be graded on; what kind of criteria we wanted it to have; even whom in the class we wished to be graded by, thus throwing the flattery of being selected into the already-challenged capacity to critically assess. I was irked and told the professor outside of class in a friendly way that what I counted on was her capacity to judge whatever we turned in as thinking and that our time might have been better spent continuing to develop the material. (These self-assessment sensitive types are usually more than happy to nestle up to you all earnest and bug-eyed, nod and nod, letting you knock them off so easily the foundation they do not to begin with have.)

Anyway, I don't like this stuff and will not do it. I've taught through the student-centered era, to the learning-centered era - a third party entity I never did get the gist of - and seen the entropy of peer group work and the influence of social dynamic in people's sharper reasoning capacities again and again. Now there are these things called living/learning communities at the big uni where students pretty much live in the same dorm and attend most of the same classes, I am asked to sub a philosophy&literature class in one of those programs now and again, and I always take note of the blended mediocrity - or worse, an overestimation of what is really their collective entropy, I always miss the freshness and daring that the dice-roll brings to a philosophy class from the student population at large. there at least is a chance for the exceptional.

It has been my experience that students are only ever as engaged in a course as the teacher is. These kinds of bullshit exercises will always suffer the effects of entropy, whereas the best teachers are fully present and teaching it from the souls [sic] of their feet, such that the students at least have to pull it out of their asses.

[Elizabeth Isabelle]

Through school, I was always the last one picked for a team (and the team would actually groan when they found out they got stuck with me on their side), I was regularly beaten up (mostly by boys, but often enough by girls too), my belongings would be stolen as the other children played "keep-away" and my stuff usually ended up in the trash. It was hard enough to get anything productive done - if the teachers had turned me over to mobs like that for grades, I wouldn't have even bothered to try.

[Trevor Salyzyn]

Bilby: The teacher's job is to guarantee that the students know the material, and one of the surest ways to do this is for him to look at the material they can produce. If he's too fucking lazy to do his job -- and instead delegates one of the major components of his job to the people he is providing his services to -- he should be fired.

[Dan Rowden]

Of course, keep in mind that Bilby is talking about Australian TAFE colleges here and the average student age is somewhere between 25 and 35 (depending on the research you read). But even with that the whole concept seems flawed to me.

[Bilby]

It’s not only flawed it’s duplicitous. I looked up peer assessments on the web and it’s supposed to aid co-operation, team building etc which I don’t believe for a minute. I’m guessing it was invented by academics in America who have the same problems our institutions have: they depend on govt funding to exist and will do all they can to get students over the line. A lot of that funding comes from migrants and other marginalised sectors. I can understand TAFE, which is essentially a business, trying to maximise its profits because that’s what businesses do. What I can’t understand is the Department of Education’s complete reluctance to become involved. I think maybe DETA (state govt) has to comply with the Dept of Anti-Discrimination (federal govt) but I could be on the wrong track. I really don’t know how the process works. I’m waiting on DETA’s investigation but I know already it will be a whitewash.

I said the same thing as Pye, that I won’t do it. But the fact is, if you’re working hard for 2 years while others just pass anyway, what’s the point of trying. Trevor, I don’t blame the teachers who probably have little say in this. I blame the system (really the government) for its lack of checks and balances.