I have been through many group activities when I was still a student. Group work is indeed effective at helping students develop one’s understanding of the desired output through effective communication and collaboration. The thing about group work is that each member can have first-hand experience on how learning process takes place within the group.
Through self and peer assessment, students can express his own learning and that of others and justify it through the rubrics created. However, I myself haven’t had much experience on actual self and peer assessment. Not until now in UPOU and through online.
Perhaps, if there was any, it didn’t impact my learning so much especially on how assessment should be. Then we unconsciously assign a leader- someone in the group who knows the topic very well. I can assess my classmates through that- determining who deserves to be the leader. So our assessment was not necessarily made by referring to rubric provided by the teacher. Sometimes our teacher assigns the leader or we, the members choose for our group. I can vividly remember my teacher just gave us a grade as a group based on our output.
While it is true that learning occurs among the members of the group, teachers cannot always closely monitor each individual’s effort in a group making self and peer assessment very useful. Here in UPOU, I learned that self and peer assessment should be integrated well as it brings a lot of benefits for students learning improvement. It enhances students’ engagement towards learning and making objective and fair assessment for his or her own.
I am thankful that I get to experience this self and peer assessment even only through online because it helped me realize that learning through and with others enhances one’s cognitive and affective skills. This assessment helps others become aware of their own learning for improvement such as being more critical and patient, creative and considerate, and communicate with empathy to be able to relate each other’s ideas. These values may not be experienced through working solo or without peer assessment.
” Improvement is better than delayed perfection”
Mark Twain
Happy learning!
jez0219 