How can you use peer assessment to support competency-based learning?

Peer assessment in competency-based learning involves having students evaluate each other's work using predefined criteria and rubrics. This process encourages self-reflection, collaboration, and iterative improvement. It fosters a deeper understanding of competencies and provides diverse feedback, enriching the learning experience.

From what I understand, competency learning focuses on building practical skills and abilities, rather than just memorizing facts or passively taking in information. It's about honing specific competencies and mastering them, rather than just repeating facts mechanically.

According to me, competency-based learning stands as a beacon of student-centered education, providing a personalized avenue for learners to navigate their educational journey at their unique pace. By emphasizing mastery of well-defined competencies, it cultivates a nuanced understanding of skills, knowledge, and abilities vital for success in specific domains. The alignment with industry standards and academic outcomes ensures relevance, while the shift from traditional inputs to tangible outputs fosters a dynamic learning environment, where evidence of learning becomes the true measure of progress.

Peer assessment can support competency-based learning by providing students with opportunities to evaluate their peers' work based on predefined competencies. For example, in a coding class, students can assess each other's programming assignments using criteria like code efficiency, readability, and adherence to best practices. This process encourages students to understand the competencies required for successful coding and helps them develop a deeper understanding of these skills by evaluating their peers' work. It also fosters a sense of accountability and promotes constructive feedback, both of which are essential for competency-based learning.

Competency-based learning is more towards the ability of a student understand a certain skill or knowledge taught to them. They can proceed to the next lesson at their own pace. Being competent means that they have successfully understood their lessons. It means that they can apply the knowledge that they learnt to their everyday lives. Competency-based learning is more than finishing the lessons. It's more to whether the students can proceed to the next lesson or not based on their understanding of the lesson.

Peer assessment is part of formative assessment, which is an integral aspect of learning. Firstly, it is essential to train students on how to conduct peer assessment because even some teachers are prone to providing inadequate feedback. Phrases like "well done" and "great job" fail to inform students about what was good and do not guide them towards their next steps. Feedback needs to be specific. My preferred method of peer feedback is TAG. I provide students with sentence stems for T (tell something you liked), A (ask a question), and G (give a positive suggestion). We demonstrate what effective feedback looks like before they engage in peer assessment. Don't forget to incorporate verbal feedback and self-assessment as well.

Peer assessment is a way of assessing the students during the learning process. It's not like the usual summative assessment that only happens at the end of the year or term. Through peer assessment, students can help assess each other. This helps them to not only correct themselves, but also helps them to see the mistakes that the other students made. With this type of assessment, students would feel more confident if they can correct the others. And if they are the ones making the mistake, they would want to better themselves as they would feel embarrassed in front of their classmates.

In my view, peer assessment emerges as a dynamic tool within the realm of formative assessments, intricately woven into the learning process itself. Its multifaceted benefits extend beyond mere evaluation, serving as a catalyst for competency development. The timely, specific, and constructive feedback it offers becomes a compass, guiding learners to recognize strengths and areas needing refinement. More than just evaluation, peer assessment nurtures self-regulation, reflection, and metacognition—critical elements for lifelong learning.

Peer assessment offers several benefits in the learning process. Firstly, it promotes a more holistic understanding of the subject matter as students evaluate each other's work, providing diverse perspectives and insights. It enhances critical thinking skills as students analyze and assess the quality of their peers' contributions. Peer assessment also fosters a sense of responsibility and accountability, as students recognize the impact of their feedback on their peers' learning experiences. Additionally, engaging in peer assessment cultivates a collaborative learning environment, where students actively participate in each other's academic growth.

In a competency-based learning landscape, integrating peer assessment unfolds as a strategic alliance benefiting both learners and instructors. The advantages ripple across the educational fabric, elevating the overall experience. Learners, now recipients of more abundant and nuanced feedback from diverse sources, find themselves in a rich learning environment. This collaborative approach not only improves the validity and reliability of assessments but also fosters a sense of community. Multiple perspectives converge in peer feedback, capturing a broader spectrum of evidence of learning and mitigating the inherent biases of a single assessor.

Like anything else, peer assessment also comes with challenges. Although there are challenges, you can overcome it. One of the challenges is that learners may not be experienced enough to assess each other. They might assess each other wrongly. The other challenge is that learners might quarrel with each other if one of them assesses the other wrongly. This would be problematic if they end up quarelling. Learners might also lose their confidence if they are assessed by their peers. This is because their peers might laugh at them over minor mistakes that they made.

Peer assessment can be a powerful tool to enable competency-based education. By having students evaluate each other's work, they develop key skills like critical thinking, communication, and collaboration. Teachers should provide rubrics and guidelines to structure the peer review process. Students should assess specific competencies the assignment was meant to demonstrate, rather than just correcting surface issues. Reflection after the peer review allows students to identify their own strengths and areas for improvement. Integrating peer feedback into final submission requirements incentivizes quality peer reviews.