An experiment in student self‐assessment

This article describes a lecturer's experiment in self‐assessment by students. His principal motivation was the belief that it would encourage better learning. Students were set somewhat open‐ended tasks, and were encouraged to collaborate with each other and with him as their lecturer, before assessing their work against their own choice of criteria. Most students were enthusiastic about the effect of self‐assessment on their learning. The method was very time‐consuming for the lecturer, but he believes that its benefits outweigh this drawback.