Peer & Self Evaluation

Intro

The Peer & Self Evaluation is an activity where students assess the contributions, performance, or behaviours of their peers, as well as their own within a group or collaborative task.

This means it is both a peer and self-evaluation activity, allowing students to:

• Evaluate their teammates

• Reflect on their own contribution

• Keep students' work accountable with their peers

By combining these two perspectives, you create a more balanced, reflective, and transparent evaluation process.

In LAMS, Peer Evaluation is designed to be structured, scalable, and aligned with collaborative learning, supporting both external judgement (peers) and internal reflection (self).

Why you want to use a Peer Evaluation as an educational activity?

Peer and self-evaluation together significantly enhance the learning experience. You are not only making contributions visible, you are also encouraging deep reflection and personal accountability.

You can use it to:

• Make individual contributions visible within group work

• Promote accountability, both to the team and to oneself

• Develop evaluative judgement, by assessing others and reflecting on personal performance

• Encourage honest self-reflection and awareness of strengths and weaknesses

• Support fairer grading outcomes in collaborative tasks

• Strengthen teamwork, communication, and responsibility

• Build feedback literacy, including giving and receiving constructive feedback

• Increase engagement, as students take ownership of both evaluation and reflection

These benefits rely on clear design and alignment with your learning objectives, not just the activity itself.

Educational Insight

You create a powerful reflective learning experience where students:

• Understand their role within a team

• Develop critical judgement

• Take ownership of their learning

This makes Peer Evaluation a core component of effective collaborative learning, not just an assessment tool.

What can you use Peer Evaluation for?

Because it includes both peer and self-evaluation, this activity is particularly powerful in situations where reflection and accountability are equally important.

You can use it to:

• Assess contribution in group projects, combining peer ratings with self-assessment

• Support Team-Based Learning (TBL) by evaluating both participation and self-perceived contribution

• Encourage reflective practice in Problem-Based Learning (PBL)

• Evaluate participation in discussions or case-based activities

• Develop professional skills, especially self-awareness and feedback skills

• Identify mismatches between self-perception and peer perception

• Adjust individual marks fairly, based on collective input

• Promote continuous improvement, through reflection across multiple activities

Using both perspectives allows you to gain richer insights into team dynamics and individual performance.

How does it work?

In LAMS, Peer Evaluation is implemented as a structured activity within a learning design, typically after a collaborative task.

A typical flow looks like this:

1. You define the evaluation criteria For example: participation, preparation, quality of contribution, teamwork

2. You choose the evaluation method

   • Rating scale (e.g. Likert scale)

   • Point allocation (e.g. distribute 100 points)

   • Ranking

   • Written feedback

   • Or a hybrid approach

3. Students evaluate both their peers and themselves (optional) Each student:

   • Rates their teammates

   • Rates their own contribution against the same criteria (optional)

4. Responses are collected and compared LAMS aggregates the data, allowing you to:

   • See peer ratings

   • Compare them with self-ratings

   • Identify alignment or discrepancies

5. Results are used for feedback and/or grading

   • Formative: to support reflection and development

   • Summative: to adjust individual marks

6. You review and act on the results You can identify patterns, address issues, and guide discussion

This dual perspective makes the activity far more insightful than peer evaluation alone.