Making Learning Visible: Student and Peer Evaluation
Lisa R. Lattuca

I’ll begin this response to Mark Giese’s final journal entry by taking up his discussion of student assessment, focusing on the issue of subjectivity in grading. I’ll also take Mark’s lead and offer a few additional reflections on the process of peer review of teaching and return, by the end of this piece, to the concept of the scholarship of teaching because it crystallizes the focus on student—and instructor—learning.

The knowledge and skills that Mark and Nancy emphasized in their course created some assessment challenges. Traditional evaluation techniques, like multiple choice tests, didn’t seem adequate to the task of measuring complex performances. Accordingly, Mark and Nancy used a variety of approaches to gauge student learning. Mark writes about the subjectivity inherent in the grading process, but argues that “despite the perils,” evaluation provides students with feedback that they can use to improve their learning.