"Professor, Slide Jumping was Pretty Intense Today: " Undergraduate Peer Educators as Formative Evaluators

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.