Peer assessment in the algorithms course

Peer assessment has the potential to encourage and enhance critical thinking skills and to help students progress toward a learning model where evidence, rather than the proclamations of an Authority, is the basis for understanding. This paper describes the use of peer assessment in the algorithms course. Our results indicate that students are able to apply assessment skills to more complex problems as the course proceeds, that there is a high correlation between the quality of their assessments and their performance in non-peer assessment course activities, and that in their assessments students tend to identify high-level errors more frequently than low-level errors.