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Peer assessment and role play: a winning alliance.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

Combining peer assessment and role play into one activity can produce an effective assessment method. Incorporating peer assessment into the project results in reduced faculty grading time and increased student learning. This paper describes an assignment that combined the two, the results, and recommendations that faculty can use to readily adapt the technique to their own content areas.

Introduction

Good faculty members are constantly seeking ways to both involve students in classes and increase learning. Long lectures can be boring for students, and studies consistently show that discussion-oriented teaching methods result in increased student engagement and learning. Role play, or simulation, is an established teaching methodology that has been used in education for many years (Bernstein, Scheerhorn, & Ritter, 2002; Taylor & Walford, 1978; Van Ments, 1983). It is viewed as a particularly powerful strategy because it can create learning experiences that are varied and realistic. In role play situations, students are active participants rather than passive observers. Participants must make decisions, solve problems, and react to the results of their decisions. Collier (1998, 2000) has written about the emotional experience for the student and the increased learning as a result of this level of participation.

With the recent increased emphasis on assessment in higher education, a logical extension of using role play or simulation as a teaching method is to use it as an evaluation of student learning. However, a drawback to using it as an assessment tool is the extensive amount of time that is required for the faculty member to review and appraise the performance of each student (Bernstein, Scheerhorn, & Ritter, 2002). Peer assessment as a method to evaluate student performance has increased substantially over recent years as a way to reduce faculty time, and some studies have reported that it can increase the understanding of students conducting the assessment as well (Bangert, 2003). Peer assessment typically involves students exchanging assignments and providing feedback to their peers through the use of rating scales or checklists (Airisian, 1996; Topping & Ehly, 1998). This technique has been used to evaluate student performance in a wide variety of disciplines such as psychology (Haaga, 1993), mathematics (Bangert, 2003; Earl, 1986), biology (Falchikov, 1986), geography (Mowl & Pain, 1995), and computer science (Marcoulides & Simkin, 1991). The project described in this paper combined role play and peer assessment into one assignment used in an education course.

Peer Assessment to Evaluate Role Play

The purpose of the project/assignment described in this paper was to explore the use of peer assessment to evaluate role play in a graduate level higher education administration course. By using peer assessment,...

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