Today I’m working through Hack #4 in Starr Sackstein’s book titled Hacking Assessment: 10 Ways to Go Gradeless, which is all about tackling the problem of the teacher being the only one in the room in charge of what and how students learn. She goes on to say that when only the teacher is the one providing feedback, students miss many opportunities to learn from other students; this can create dependent learners instead of independent learners.
So how exactly do we do this? We can begin by teaching students how to become peer reviewers, and encourage the use of technology tools such as Google Docs, that allow for collaboration and providing feedback directly within documents. This will take time for the student to learn, so this is something that needs to be incorporated into class time on a regular basis and must be modeled by the teacher.
This takes advantage of your students’ collective knowledge, teaches students how to provide constructive feedback to their peers, and will actually allow for a teacher to facilitate the learning process rather than controlling it. Do you incorporate peer review into your classroom? If you do, please share your thoughts on Twitter at #hackingassessment. If you don’t and have questions, let’s discuss them!
