| dc.description.abstract | Peer assessment has been widely used in teaching and learning for recent years. Many studies have suggested that peer assessment can bring benefits to student learning, e.g., the increase of learning motivation and the higher-order thinking ability. However, each individual has different background, needs and learning preferences. Thus, it is doubtful whether peer assessment can be suitable to each learner. To this end, there is a need to consider individual differences. Among various individual differences, this study focuses on prior knowledge, which refer to the way of learners organizing and processing information. Some scholars have found that prior knowledge play a key role in the learning process. However, paucity of research examined the impacts of prior knowledge on assessment scores, learning perceptions and learning achievements in the context of peer assessment.
To fill this gap, this study aimed to address this issue. To achieve comprehensive understandings, this study examined eight research questions, i.e., (a) How the levels of prior knowledge affects the scores that learners obtain during the process of peer assessment; (b) How the levels of prior knowledge affects the scores that learners marks during the process of peer assessment; (c) How the levels of prior knowledge affects assessment differences between learners and teachers during the process of peer assessment; (d) How the levels of prior knowledge affects correlations between learners’ assessment and others; (e) How the levels of prior knowledge affects learners’ learning perceptions during the process of peer assessment; (f) How the levels of prior knowledge affects the correlation between learners’ learning perceptions and the dimension of teaching activities; (g) How the levels of prior knowledge affects learners’ learning achievements during the process of peer assessment; (h) How the levels of prior knowledge affects the correlation between learners’ learning achievements and the scores obtained from the assessment.
The study was conducted for the ninth grade students (N=38). According to the average scores of the 7th grade monthly test, the students were divided into high-prior knowledge students (N=21) and low-prior knowledge students (N=17). The experiment lasted for four weeks, and in total it took 540 minutes. In the first and second weeks, traditional teaching was undertaken and students reviewed relevant learning units. Before and after the traditional teaching, students had to take the pre-testing and the middle–testing, respectively. In the third week, students made a video and the students with the same knowledge were assigned as a group to make a video together. In the fourth week, the students and teacher did the assessment separately for the videos of each group made in the third week. Finally, the students were asked to take the post-tests and fill out a questionnaire.
The results of this study showed that learners with different levels of prior knowledge obtained different scores, made different assessment, and showed different learning perceptions and learning achievements during the process of peer assessment. Regarding the scores that they obtained, the high-prior knowledge learners were more likely to get higher scores because they were good at developing their own information processing structure, and the thinking logic is more organized. On the contrary, the low-prior knowledge learners have poor understandings of the course content. Accordingly, it was easy for them to provide the wrong learning content, so the scores obtained were lower. Regarding the assessment difference, the high-prior knowledge learners have more detailed assessment on the internal features of the videos so their assessment are more in line with the theme. On the contrary, the low-prior knowledge learners tended to ignore the wrong content in the videos so that they gave a higher score. On the other hand, the high-prior knowledge learners and the low-prior knowledge learners have similar learning perceptions in peer assessment. The high-prior knowledge learners are prone to pursue better performance and produce positive behavioral performance; on the contrary, the low-prior knowledge learners are susceptible to changes in external learning styles to improve learning motivation. The above-mentioned learning perception may be one of the factors that enables all students to actively participate in the curriculum. This helps students gain knowledge so that both high-prior knowledge learners and low-prior knowledge learners can make learning achievements in courses. However, the average performance of high-prior knowledge learners was slightly higher than that of low-prior learners, and this may be due to the difference in the provision of homogenous groupings. The high-prior knowledge learners interact with people with a similar level of prior knowledge could easily trigger learning in the near-development area; on the contrary, low-prior knowledge learners could not obtain sufficient scaffolding from people with a similar level of prior knowledge.
The above results showed that peer assessment could motivate both high-prior knowledge learners and low-prior knowledge learners. In other words, peer assessment is effective for learners with different levels of prior knowledge. The results of this study can provide deep understandings of how to establish peer assessment that can accommodate the needs of learners with different levels of prior knowledge. Moreover, these findings can guide designers, researchers, textbook designers and students on how to develop appropriate learning courses that meet the needs of everyone so that the goal of establishing a personalized learning system can be achieved. By doing so, the development of peer assessment can be promoted in the future. | en_US |