The Key Role of the Teacher in the Implementation of Peer Assessment in Higher Education

Research on peer assessment (PA) in Higher Education (HE) has focused extensively on learning benefits, validity and reliability, impact on students’ performance and students’ perceptions.
The purpose of this paper is to add a new perspective by focusing on the key role of teachers in the successful implementation of PA. The efficiency of PA exercises depends greatly on the quality of the instructional design (Falchikov and Goldfinch, 2000), the characteristics of the rubrics (Reinholz, 2015), students’ training on evaluation skills (Van Zundert, Sluijsmans and Van Merrienboer, 2010) and the collaboration between teachers and students in the writing of assessment criteria (Thomas, Martin and Pleasants, 2011). These issues are closely related to the teaching skills, involvement and attitudes of teaching staff in the setting-up and delivery of PA exercises and therefore deserve special consideration in order to ensure that PA is implemented in such a way that its benefits (enhance learning, promote self-reflection, develop graduate skills, etc.) are maximized.
The topics discussed in this paper fall into three main categories: instructional design, collaboration between teacher and students and training in evaluation and technological skills. The first category includes issues such as the importance of a constructive alignment design model and the challenges of linking course assessment criteria with peer assessment rubrics. Some of the issues included in the second category are the role of the teacher as facilitator and a collaborative approach between faculty and students to decide assessment criteria. Finally, the need for guiding and training students in skills such as evaluation and reflection are discussed in the third category.