International Journal of Education and Social Science (IJESS)

While summative evaluations in the form of examinations, term papers, standardized tests, and end-of-term student ratings of instructors are common forms of assessment in higher education, much less attention has been devoted to formative assessment. By obtaining ongoing feedback while a course is in progress, formative assessment can provide detailed information about specific aspects of student and/or instructor performance as well as course content. Instructors may use this information to make changes in content or alter pedagogical strategies within an ongoing course. The current project describes a newly developed approach to formative course assessment involving undergraduate peer educators as evaluators. The peer educators, advanced students who provided review sessions and tutoring for a specific course, attended the class and completed weekly assessments focusing on the instructor’s teaching style, course content, and student response. The opportunity to receive “micro-level” feedback about specific class periods and/or the teaching of specific content was very helpful to the instructor and led to course revision. The results of this project are discussed from the perspective of Schon’s (1983) description of reflective practice. The peer educators found their role to be beneficial and included the further development of their metacogntive skills. With increased calls for accountability by accrediting bodies and government officials, universities in the United States are being challenged to document educational outcomes (Dill & Berkens, 2011). Accountability is now a frequently-cited value enacted by holding colleges and universities responsible for student learning and the “product” that educational institutions provide. This emphasis on accountability reflects a broader decline in public trust in many U.S. institutions including health care institutions, banks, and religious institutions (Eaton, 2011; Yankelovich, 2006) Governmental response to this reduced public trust has been to increase regulatory activity. To provide the information required by the accountability emphasis, universities have increasingly become focused on outcome-based assessment (Eaton, 2011). In higher education, these outcomes are in the form of “…knowledge, skills, and abilities, which a student has attained as a result of engagement in a particular set of higher education experiences” (Eaton, 2011; p. 14).