Dr Nicholas Freestone
Associate Professor
Kingston University
Nick Freestone is an Associate Professor at Kingston University and has a long-held interest in the pedagogical aspects of academic practice. He was the education theme lead, and since has been involved in raising the profile of learning and teaching as a pathway for career progression and promotion. He has also offered mentoring for colleagues in the often bewildering and foreign world of pedagogy for those interested in examining more closely the learning and teaching parts of their academic lives.
“Assessment tends to shape every part of the student learning experience”
As articulated above, assessment profoundly impacts on the student learning experience (Orsmond, Merry, and Reiling, 2000). Orsmond and colleagues, in a Bioscience context, emphasised the power of student-generated marking criteria in self- and peer-assessment. Despite this recognition, persistent dissatisfaction remains among university students in the UK regarding assessment and feedback practices. The 2025 National Student Survey reports that although 86.9% of students expressed overall satisfaction with the teaching on their courses—and 92% commended their teachers’ explanation skills—only 75.2% felt that assessment feedback helped improve their future work and just 78.1% said that marking criteria on their assessments were clear.
Significant efforts across the sector have aimed to enhance assessment and feedback practices and this has yielded big gains in student satisfaction in terms of assessment and feedback. This metric though still lags behind other aspects of the student learning journey in the UK. Students may struggle to recognise what constitutes useful feedback, its purpose, and how to use it in the future to improve their work. From the staff perspective, especially in large practical classes undertaken in a rota system in disciplines like physiology, prompt marking risks collusion or plagiarism when consecutive student groups handle similar tasks.
Timely feedback remains widely advocated in the literature—and rightly so. Delayed feedback can render the returned work irrelevant, diminishing its learning value. Indeed, Fisher et al., (2025) found that student motivation significantly declines when feedback takes longer than 10 days. In addition, the degree of variation in the nature and extent of feedback may lead to the whole process being viewed negatively by the student. How then to improve the assessment literacy of students?
To enhance assessment literacy and address these issues, two objectives emerge:
1. Accelerate the feedback loop.
2. Employ peer assessment to foster critical and evaluative capabilities and meta-cognitive skills among undergraduates.
One practical model is a tutor-facilitated “instant feedback” peer-assessment process. In this approach, Year 2 (Level 5) students (~100 per cohort, grouped in 20s over weekly sessions) conducted a spectrophotometry practical to determine the concentration of a biological analyte using a standard curve. Immediately thereafter, students plotted their data and calculated the unknown concentration of the analyte in the biological sample.
Their anonymised work (identified only by their student number) was then collected and randomly redistributed by the lecturer. The lecturer then presents data showing how the plot should look. Students were told to mark their peer’s work based on criteria presented on the lecturer’s ‘idealised’ plot (appropriate title, axis legends and units, linearity of plot and accuracy of unknown determination etc.). The unknown analyte concentration was changed each session. Finally, a full report was written up by the students in the normal manner and the work assessed by the tutor to make up the rest of the marks and quality control the peer marking process.
This method grants immediate, clear, and criteria-based feedback, promoting transparency and reinforcing assessment literacy. Student feedback on this approach revealed its value:
“It showed in what fashion work is marked, and explained why marks could be lost due to seemingly insignificant errors.”
“I gained an insight into the positive and negative aspects of my work and how this affected my overall mark. This will aid me in future assignments.”
By participating in both evaluating and being evaluated, students gain insight into assessment expectations and their own performance. Moreover, this model allows academic staff to manage marking loads more efficiently. Consequently, there are manifold benefits to this type of approach. These include:
1. Enhanced Academic Performance
Meta-analyses show peer assessment improves academic achievement with small-to-moderate effect sizes (g ≈ 0.31 compared to no feedback; g ≈ 0.28 compared to teacher feedback) across various contexts and disciplines (Double et al, 2019).
Experimental studies also confirm that peer-assessment can significantly boost student performance (Sun et al, 2014).
2. Heightened Feedback Literacy and Self-Regulation
Peer assessment encourages the development of students’ evaluative judgment, reflection, and capacity for self-regulated learning. When students provide feedback to peers, they strengthen their own understanding of assessment criteria and better regulate their own future learning processes (Little et al, 2023).
3. Learner Autonomy and Community Building
Students involved in peer assessment report greater engagement, confidence, and autonomy as learners. Peer assessment can also foster collaborative learning environments: students become part of a learning community, exchanging insights and developing trust with their peers.
4. Efficiency and Responsibility
Peer assessment can alleviate instructor workload by distributing marking efforts among students, enabling quicker turnaround and more thorough engagement with fewer submissions per student. Additionally, peer accountability can reduce “social loafing” in team contexts, as individuals know their contributions will be evaluated by peers.
Evidence indicates peer grading can be sufficiently accurate for low-stakes tasks and increases practice opportunities without overburdening instructors (Freeman and Parks, 2010). Staff time then shifts from marking every script to orchestrating the peer assessment process, enabling richer dialogue about quality while maintaining throughput.
5. Fairness, Reflection, and Safeguards
When peer assessment is formative rather than summative, it tends to be more effective and better received. Reflective integration—such as requiring students to reflect upon feedback they give and receive—enhances clarity of criteria and may improve learning outcomes. It’s critical to build trust, train students in assessment tasks, and manage group dynamics to ensure fairness and quality. From an anecdotal perspective, students can be effectively trained to become competent assessors of other students’ work.
In my own experience, piloting this type of activity in a second year class resulted in a seemingly chaotic, loud and seemingly fractious environment. However, with the same cohort of students, in the next year of their studies the same activity was undertaken with concentrated silence and respectful diligence. Thus, students should first be exposed to this kind of activity in a formative assessment context before summative assessments may be undertaken.
References
Double KS, McGrane JA, Hopfenbeck TN. (2020). The Impact of Peer Assessment on Academic Performance: A Meta-analysis. Educational Psychology Review. 32: 481-509.
Fisher DP, Brotto G, Lim I, Southam C. (2025). The Impact of Timely Formative Feedback on University Student Motivation. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 50:622–631.
doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2025.2449891
Freeman S, Parks JW. (2010) How accurate is peer grading? CBE Life Sci Educ. 9:482-8.
doi: 10.1187/cbe.10-03-0017
Little T, Dawson P, Boud D, Tai J. (2023). Can students’ feedback literacy be improved? A scoping review of interventions. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 49:, 39–52.
doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2023.2177613
Orsmond P, Merry S, Reiling K. (2000) The use of student derived marking criteria in self and peer-assessment. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 25: 23-28
Sun D, Harris N, Walther G, Baiocchi M. (2014) Peer assessment enhances student learning. arXiv:1410.3853