The Teachers’ Corner:

Teachers are always looking for ways of reducing their marking loads – and they can’t be blamed for that! Anyone who has ever been in a classroom understands the endless battle of “keeping up with my marking”.

Traditionally, one of the ways of reducing the load is to use students as peer markers of short tests or quizzes where there is little or no room for equivocation.  The answers are either right or wrong.  Over the years, however, as a classroom teacher, I became more and more aware of the capacity of students to evaluate more complex answers – i.e. something calling for a written response – and doing a very respectable job at it.  To some extent, this has been made easier now by the more common use of a detailed scoring rubric.  So, let’s look at using peer markers in this context.

First, let’s agree that a well-designed rubric is essential for guidance.

Second, the process I am going to describe would be generally applicable in a classroom of older students (Grade 9-12) though one cannot rule out giving the opportunity to students in Grades 7-8.

Finally, in implementing peer marking for this kind of assignment (i.e. a written response to a question), the teacher must be careful not to give the assignment too high a value in the context of the total marks allowed for class tests and assignments.  The value could be adjusted upward, however, if the teacher becomes more and more confident that the students are fully able to judge fairly and accurately.

The other condition is to use multiple markers in a ‘blind” format.  It goes like this:

• Assign every student a student number and ask all students to use the number rather than their names on the paper to be submitted.
• Distribute to all students a marking sheet which includes a place for their name, the number of the paper being marked, the assigned grade and a place for a comment.
• Review in detail the rubric so that students feel comfortable in using it as a basis for assigning a grade.
• Distribute the assignments randomly to students and ask them to assign a grade based on the rubric and a comment on their marking sheet. In other words, no comment or mark appears on the student assignment.  Monitor their work and help them in class with any questions they might have.
• Collect the papers. Redistribute the papers again and ask students to do the same on another paper.
• Then repeat the process for a third and final time.

You now have three marks for each paper.  You collect the assignments and the marking sheets and average the three marks for each student placing the final grade on the paper as well as adding a comment from a peer marker that you feel will be useful.

Before entering the marks in your mark book, take a quick look at the distribution of the three marks.  Suppose the final mark uses a four-point scale:

4 – Exceeds Expectations

3 – Meets Expectations

2 – Approaches Expectations

1 – Does Not Meet Expectations

In the case of those papers where there is a significant discrepancy among the three marks, you may want to re-visit the paper and adjust the mark.

Is the mark defensible?  I believe it is and is more so because the mark is a product of three assessors who are unaware of the author.  It is based on a rubric that has been thoroughly explained.  My experience is that the students took the exercise seriously and professionally and were pleased that the teacher had shown confidence in them.  Their marks were fair and not out of range.

Finally, the reading and assessing of others’ work should open the students up to additional possibilities in terms of the quality of their own work.  It gives them a real sense of “how they stack up against their peers” and may cause them to revisit what they have done in their own assignment when it is returned – in comparison to their peers.  And another mark in the mark book that doesn’t require hours of a teacher’s marking time will be a well-deserved break for the beleaguered teacher.

Why not give it a try?

Dr. Dan