Investigating the value of peer assessments for improving student teachers’ wiki projects

Forty-eight student teachers who were taught by the author participated in formative assessment activities. Student teachers formed 10 groups to author wiki pages by applying the skills and knowledge they had learnt in classes. In the following week, students individually gave online comments to two groups for improvement. It was found that the students were very engaged in peer assessment. There were an average of 2.54 positive comments and 1.81 comments related to room for improvement per student. Receiving groups also took their peers’ comments seriously. The log of wiki pages showed the number of revisions ranged from no revisions to 93 revisions. To understand the underlying reasons, the peer comments of the extreme cases (Group 1 and Group 9) were examined. It was found that the comments made to Group 1 were rather moderate but comments to Group 9 were exceptionally good. For example, Group 1 was suggested to increase contents, to make the project more appealing by having different colors, and to reduce the sizes of the images whilst peers regarding Group 9’s project very attractive and the contents were informative and detailed. The findings suggested that peer assessment was an invaluable experience for improving wiki projects.