Undergraduate students in peer review : exploring assessment and feedback processes to develop evaluative judgement

Within teaching and learning in Higher Education, the development of students' evaluative judgement has recently garnered noticeable attention. Exemplar analysis and peer review are among key pedagogical activities that have been identified, by researchers, as being important for developing both students' evaluative judgement and their feedback literacy. The aim of this study was to explore what supported undergraduate students' experiences of developing their judgements of quality and what supported students when implementing those judgements. The study was carried out in a third level institution in the Republic of Ireland during a first year Bachelor of Arts social care module. The thirty-three participating students peer reviewed assessment work through a process which aimed to cultivate their experiences to judge not only their peers' work, but ultimately their own. Qualitative data generated from students included exit slip reflections, recorded classroom discussions; two focus group discussions; and thirteen semi-structured interviews. A reflexive thematic analysis of the data generated three main themes of importance for the students' experiences: guidance, engagement, and judgement. Subthemes coming under each of these themes related to what contributed to students' development of their judgements of quality and the implementation of their judgements of quality. The findings indicate that the formative nature of this process, along with students' involvement in the feedback process, were significant for their learning and developing their evaluative judgment. This study confirms those which have demonstrated that students benefit from being afforded opportunities to engage in judging academic work because it can not only help students to think more about their own work, but also how to amend it, if needed. Overall, it shows that involving students in judgement processes over time is important when it comes to developing their judgement.