Motivating Students and Improving Quality of Learning Using Peer-Reviews

This paper reports about a pedagogical experiment at Zaporozhye National University (ZNU) aiming at improving motivation and learning quality in Computer Science Bachelor programme. The major novelty in teaching and learning practice introduced in the experiment was the use of peer evaluation for the assessment of coursework reports in two disciplines – one in the II-nd and the other in the IV-th year of study. The results were compared to the historical data collected in the previous 3-4 years. Our experiment proved that exploiting students’ aspirations for informal leadership and incurred competition constructively is effective and yields some increase in motivation to learn and learning quality. The assessments were also subjectively regarded as more clear and better justified by the students involved in the experiment. A good side effect is also that the students learn the working patterns of the professionals in their field broadly used in academia and industry for making qualitative and unbiased peer evaluations.