Poster presentations and peer assessment: novel forms of evaluation and assessment

A comparison of student achievement in different assessment exercises shows that diversity of assessment strategies is needed to assess students fairly and avoid discrimination Final-year Biology and Environmental Science students presented posters describing major ecosystem processes for a named ecosystem of their choice. Peer assessment and staff assessment are compared. Marks for poster presentations are also compared with marks for essays in the same subject area. Student assessors overmarked each other's work but ranked the posters in the same order as staff assessors. Students who gained high marks in the poster presentation tended to do poorly in the essay and vice versa. This suggests that diversity of assessment strategies is needed in order to assess students fairly. By only using one form of assessment, we may be discriminating against some students.