The simple answer is yes in my opinion.

There are large bodies of evidence coming through regarding co-creating curricular and engaging learners in negotiated assessments. e.g.  The Higher Education Academy (HEA) has lots of case studies and evidence https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/resource/using-peer-assessment-and-feedback-facilitate-learning-initiatives-demonstrate-innovation

I have done the following stages/steps to engage learning and adapt thinking skills and enhance their learning.

1- Detailed breakdown of comprehending assessment questions e.g. keywords, rubrics etc

2 - Detailed explanation of assessment criteria, with students marking previous cohorts (anonymised) work to understand expectations and different levels of engagement with learning

3 - Creating assessment questions and marking criteria as a class and writing various levels of model answers together and marking together to understand the assessment criteria. 

4 - Creating assessment questions and marking criteria in groups, group answers and peer marking

5 - individuals creating assessment questions and marking criteria, writing an answer to their own questions, self marking against their own criteria and then giving it to peers for second marking and me as a teacher for 2nd marking/moderation.

These intense sessions would be done over a couple of weeks alongside subject level teaching to help enable learners to gain an insight into their own learning.

Would be interested to hear what others have been doing.

Best wishes

Duncan

I Agree with Duncan that the simple answer is Yes.

One way of looking at this is from John Biggs' 'Constructive Alignment' perspective where what is assessed needs to align with what the intended learning outcomes are. If these were not aligned, and with the realization that students more often than not study for assessment rather than for the pure sake of knowledge, there will be a mismatch between what the teacher intended the students to learn and what students actually end up learning.

By involving the students in the assessment process, this will democratize the learning process, increase student engagement, awareness about the teaching process, and ideally increase the level of such 'constructive alignment'.

Giving students a voice in fine tuning the curriculum content and the preferred approach to learn each topic and how this can be assessed is one way of doing that. I know it is easier said than done, but we can always try. Duncan has given some useful useful practical tips on how some of this can be done.

Please see some publications in my profile.

Kind regards

NP

I agree with Duncan and Ahmed to involve students' in the process of learning. One of the ways that students’ are involved in the learning process in my district was the School Improvement Plan (SIP).  The goal was to give students’ a voice in the learning process along with the parents and the staff. You can find a lot of research that validates this theory. An academic journal out of University of Nebraska at Omaha may be able to assist you in your findings.

By: Fluckiger, Jarene; Vigil, Yvonne Tixier y; Pasco, Rebecca; Danielson, Kathy. College Teaching. Fall2010, Vol. 58 Issue 4, p136-140. 5p. DOI: 10.1080/87567555.2010.484031. , Database: MasterFILE Elite

Yes, but reservedly, so to speak. Joint assessment is important. However, the "expert" should - at least, in most cases - have the final say. Otherwise, one could end up with an any opinion is equally plausible conundrum. Best wishes Paul

Absolutely yes. Any initiative that lead to students to control their own education process is always positive. I don't have the Stephen reserves (but I understand it) since from my experience students use to be quite critical with their own work and accept critics when they are well explained. 

You make an interesting and important point Xavier. Notwithstanding do you not think that some form of external (or independent) assessment is essential too?. Otherwise, I would be able to award mysef top scores even for poor perfomance. Best. Paul

Absolutely Yes.

Within the “DU Techniques multimedia” course, we have a very active pedagogy where evaluation is also participatory. Indeed we:

- Evaluate only what is necessary to allow to express creativity and decrease the "penalty" effect.

- Evaluate in a spiral cycle of production : inductive learning, then production, then collective criticism, then change and finally evaluation. Students are free to integrate the remarks made by the group to enhance their productions. This method improves motivation, incentive to push "further" its work and develops a critical spirit of group. We are in the Exchange and interpersonal interaction, source of wealth.

- The feedback is very common, each production being corrected in class in a collaborative manner. The student learns to assess and develops its own criteria of quality. We remind that the feedback is one of the main levers of student success as shown in the meta-analysis of John Hattie (http://visible-learning.org).

Dear Zina,

I say 'Yes'. From my experience students tend to ask and use technological means to find answers.  Through partnership the educator can find out misconceptions of students about learning and on the other hand students learn how to assess themselves and identify their weaknesses.

Regards

Carmen Camilleri

Yes involving students as partners in Assessment is a way to enhance learning. I have allowed them to choose their debating topics for their team debates which graded as a group activity but aim at developing their critical thinking skills. They are more motivated to engage in the debate and take great pains in researching their topics and rebutting their opponents' arguments in very lengthy posts. I also am enthused by their motivation and depth of responses that show their deep understanding of the course topic. See the attached for the process and outcome.

Best regards,

Debra

Conference Paper Debating: A Dynamic Teaching Strategy for Motivating Student...

Dear Friends. Collaborative assessment is a very good idea. However, weighting must play an important role. For example, if I learnt to fly a passenger plane, I think that the passengers would feel a lot more comfortable to know that evaluation of my performance by an expert pilot was a very big part of the story.. Best Paul

Ever since I was ten years old, my teachers have been getting us to exchange books and correct the homework of our friends.  How could she do it alone?  After each lesson, we would have 30 - 50 sentences to write for English alone.  The same teacher taught us math and a few other subjects.  Isn't she a super lady?  So I believed that I learned as much from the mistakes of my friends, as I learned from my own mistakes.  Now I teach biology and I do allow my students to exchange scripts to mark; uncertainties are entertained immediately, feedback is given, common errors are all brought to the surface; and learning is enhanced, because we all learn from mistakes.

Definitely yes.

Prof Lorna Earl identified a subset of formative assessment - assessment as learning where learners partner with their teachers to be active participants in understanding and directing their own learning processes in order to maximise their learning. Learners become "critical connectors" between assessment and learning resulting in metacognitive activation and development for meaningful learning progress and ultimately independent, life-long learning.

Earl, L. M. (2003). Assessment As Learning: Using Classroom Assessment to Maximise Student Learning. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press.

White and Frederiksen (1998) conducted a study in which groups of students participated in self-reflective assessment as learning activities in order to develop and practice metacognition. When the researchers analysed the achievement of the students, the weakest students in the experimental groups performed as well as the best students in the control groups and the other students did even better. The achievement gaps in the experimental groups were reduced by half compared to the control groups.

White, B. Y., & Frederiksen, J. R. (1998). Enquiry, Modeling and Metacognition: Making Science Accessible to All Students. Cognition and Instruction, 16(1), 3-118.

“if we wish to discover the truth about an educational system, we must first look to its assessment procedures” Derek Rowntree ( 1987, as cited in Gibbs, 2010, p. 4).

 YES, It is very essential to involve students in assessment. Without assessment and feedback there is no progress and no learning occurs. I used to ask my students to exchange their exercise books especially with dictation. Using talent leaders (students) in the class who can assist the teacher would reduce assessing burden on the teacher. Self assessment is another way students can be involved in but it needs training so students  get the truth picture about their progress.    

I would suggest that the answer is more complex than it may initially appear.  If we consider, say, a math class or a writing class, certainly students can and should have a role in assessment.  Writing workshops, for example, are ubiquitous in the US and involve asking students to exchange papers and check them for evidence, formatting, etc.  This is formative assessment and provides opportunities for the teacher to help students develop their skills as editors and writers.

Matters become more complex, however, when assessment shifts to summative evaluation.  Students are unlikely to have developed sufficient expertise in the content area to be able to make informed judgments regarding the overall quality of a fellow student's work.  There are ways around this, of course.  Using the writing class once again as an example, I have trained students in holistic assessment, worked with them to develop a scoring rubric, and then had them score papers.  This work very well, but note that holistic scoring is very structured, so students have clear guidelines that allow for accurate summative assessment.

If we consider other types of classes, such an approach is unlike to work--in a math class or a literature class, for example.  Also, for holistic scoring to work in a writing class, all students must write on the same topic.  If they write on different topics, the rubric must be criterion based, which involves features that are commonly beyond the knowledge level of students.  My concern is that in a rush to involve students in assessment, some teachers will ignore the need for structure and safeguards, rending assessment invalid and unreliable.

When involving students, present a rubric or other set of objective criteria. Otherwise, many of the responses will be subjective and too often not the info you are seeking.

Well, the question should not be whether you CAN involve students as partners in assessment of their learning; you MUST involve them in assessment.

There are several ways you can do that. There have been a spate of recent studies on the subject and each of these studies have established that involving students in their assessments brings numerous benefits; both in the quality of assessment and improved learning.

You can involve them in discussing the intended outcome,  best methods to asses learning, creating rubrics, just to name a few of the ways. 

i think its a fantastic way!!

One simple methods of involving students in their assessment is, group students, assign seperate sections of the content to different groups, require them prepare possible higher order thinking (HOTS) questions and their answers, that if done done accordingly lecturer will be having a good chunk of questions, from which he/she choose for final exam, mid-terms, etc., 

Here students would be thinking before they prepare questions and while writing answers too; thus a lot of learning might happen

yes

I agree with the above answers, YES. It is very important to involve students in the assessment as this will increase their awareness e of the learning outcomes that are required as well as might reduce their mistakes when they assess their classmates. I used to ask my students to exchange their papers and assess for each other.

Yes, but There are some Conditions.

Thanks Noman Mohammad.

The problem with this approach is that legitimate assessment is complicated. In my previous response to this question, I mentioned what we see in a writing workshop where students read one another's papers and offer suggestions for improvement. What I left out, however, is that their ability to do so requires teaching a number of factors associated with effective writing. The idea that students can engage in assessment without some training is the equivalent of asking me, with a degree in linguistics, to assess someone's ability to do calculus. Unfortunately, during my career, I've encountered many faculty who know nothing whatsoever about assessment and who think that all they have to do is tell students to read a paper or check the numbers on a spreadsheet. The most egregious problems in this regard, again in my experience, is in the humanities.

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