Promoting student commitment and responsibility through self- and peer-assessment

While continuous assessment is regularly used in higher education, some of its limitations are often ignored. In particular, the importance of the delivered product tends to be emphasised over that of the actual learning process, which may result in some academic misconducts. To address this situation, and to promote students´ honesty and awareness of their learning process, a framework involving self-assessment and peer-assessment is proposed. The two main and novel ingredients of the proposed approach are as follows. On the one hand, an emphasis is paid on the reflective nature of self-assessment, which clearly redirects student focus on the process and learning outcome (the end) rather than the product (the means). On the other hand, self/peer-assessment are followed by a validation in-lab test, and the grading policy takes into account the respective grades in a coupled manner, so that honesty is encouraged through consistent grades. A two-year experience in a first-year introductory course to Computer Engineering is reported. Some strong and weak points of the approach have been identified and will inform its subsequent redesign.