The Role of Peer and Self-Assessment in the Assessment Process - Essay Example

Self-assessment helps one to understand their strengths and weaknesses. In case of weakness, they learn from their mistakes and study how to tame or counter them. This learning method helps to remove the notion that learning is just a passive process where students listen to someone and get what he says. Here one listens to themselves and their peers. This process makes students more involved in the learning process. The more involved they are, the more effective the learning process is. David Kolb defines self-assessment learning as a process a spiral learning way, which takes into consideration all the fundamentals of learning.

These are thinking, reflecting, experiencing, and acting. This makes it very effective (Lippincott, J. 1999, 67).This learning method also helps one to know the requirements that they need in order to achieve a certain goal. Having known their strengths and weakness, this is easier since they know the target they have to set for certain disciplines. They tend to know their expectations, and how to achieve them.The criterion for and self-assessment is very vital in the assessment process. It should be clear to help the student know what is expected of them.

Self-assessment can be used in two ways. It can be used in a summative or formative way. In most cases, it is used formatively. In formative ones, peer sets their standards for them; whereas, summative mostly includes the use of group work to set one's target (Catherine. 2011, 25).