This article will present the methodology and some experiences from the use of peer assessment in the Norwegian language course of the preparatory course for engineering at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). In this course, the students are to develop skills in academic writing, and they perform necessary practice in this by writing several texts throughout the year. In some of these texts, peer assessment is the only assessment, and we perform this by letting the students use assessment rubrics as well as in-text comments to each other, as opposed to teacher comments and evaluation.

With up to sixty students in each class, the teacher is unable to give thorough feedback to every student on all assignments, though we still find it important that they perform extensive writing practice to be handed in for evaluation. Moreover, we have strived to develop methods that better accommodate the ability of self-evaluating writing performances, since this is a skill that our students are going to need both in the exams, in further studies and in professional work.

Our experiences with peer assessment are in line with the students’ claims that it better enables them to evaluate their own work. We therefore believe it is more suitable for lifelong learning and as a ground to develop into a skilled writer in due time, a process that takes longer than the duration of our course. Furthermore, in our experience, peer assessment is a challenging and rewarding exercise when done well, but it is crucial that the students have clear guidelines and available teacher guidance throughout the whole process.

Keywords: Education, peer assessment, evaluation, self-evaluation, academic writing.