The Future of Education

This paper presents work related to the realization of the project Staying Connected Through Connecting: Peer Learning and Peer Assessment in Pharmacy Education. The project is supported by The Norwegian Directorate for Higher Education and Skills and aims at strengthening students’ learning outcomes through active and collaborative methods of learning and parallelly, at advancing pedagogical competence of the teachers. Learning activities developed during project work are being implemented in the study program Bachelor of Pharmacy, Nord University, Norway. The objective of the paper is to document students’ perceptions of peer assessment provided through feedback technique “Two Stars and a Wish”. The activity was conducted with the first-year students as an introduction to student feedback strategies. Numerous studies conducted over the last three decades evidenced positive impact of peer assessment on learners’ performance [1]. The goal of the presented enquiry was to find out how students respond to learning activity involving assessment of their co-students’ work. Perceptual data collected through questionnaire indicate positive evaluation of peer assessment as a learning experience. The answers to both: close-ended questions (quantitative data), and open-ended questions (qualitative data) were prevailingly favorable and affirmative. These results encourage further work with peer feedback as a practice that can benefit not only students’ engagement in learning but also teachers’ professional development.