Incorporating peer review assessment tool for a digital media course

Assessment has always been a part of the educational landscape, serving many different purposes and coming in many various forms. In a higher education landscape, assessment feedback is viewed as a constructive and reflection of individual work, it influences the learning path and individual achievement, at the same time the impact on individual receiving it can be positive or negative. The complexities of learning Digital Media program require more than just the educator’s feedback. The constant changing and updating of technology means, both students and educators need to have updated skills and knowledge of the industry expectation. In managing Digital competencies, the educator needs to re-evaluate the way they give feedback to the students without restricted to the assessor's common knowledge on the current technology. On the other hand, the digital media students need to respond to real-world tasks and should be able to create industry standard digital products with a purpose and for an audience. There is a need for a learning strategy where the students can continuously learn new technology and reflection on practices in place. What better way to enable the student to learn and evaluate work of others than assessing and giving feedback in peer review? This paper reports on research conducted into the use of peer review assessment as part of the assessment tool method in a Digital Story Telling course, part of a Digital Media program at an Australian university. The objectives of this research are to study the effectiveness and relevance of the Peer Review assessment tool introduced in this course, answering the research question “How practical is Peer Review assessment tool in Digital Media courses?