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groups was the approach where many students
pointed out easily identifiable issues in the ex-
ample texts, such as the amount of references to
literature or the fact that example text two referred
to an article in a newspaper which many found
decreased the scientific value of the text. Many
drew the conclusion that text one had a higher
scientific value than text two, because all refer-
ences used were from previous studies on the
same topic as discussed in the text, which they
found more relevant than the approach in text two
where other sources had been used, including a
newspaper article!
However, there were also other students in
all of the groups that stated that they somehow
thought that text two was the better one, although
they didn't manage to express many arguments
for why they made this conclusion. Some said
that it had a better flow than the referential text
or that they had the feeling it was a better text
than the other.
There are many visible signs in the remarks the
students made to each other's postings that they
took a great interest in other's point of view. A
few students managed to identify differences in
opinion while most seemed to settle for identify-
ing similarities with their own ideas.
At this point the students were tutored by being
asked questions if they could identify any 'signs
of scientific knowledge building' when studying
how the texts were written. What conclusions
could they make when looking at how the two
authors had constructed their texts? Did they find
that one or the other was showing more signs of
independent and critical thinking? Did they man-
age to identify an author voice?
These were questions that seemed to trigger the
students to engage further in collaborative analyse
of the texts. The general opinion about the texts in
all groups started to turn in favour of expressing
the opinion that text two was of higher scientific
value since the authors referred to other studies to
put weight behind their own argumentation, thus
creating new knowledge rather than just referring
to findings already made in the field of research.
One of the students wrote that:
At first I thought that text one was more trust-
worthy, now I can see that text two is written in
a more critical, argumentative and independent
style, which adds to the trustworthiness. (in
translation).
Similar comments were also found in all the
other study groups, although some students also
wrote that they still felt unsure if they had come
up with the right answers or not but that they had
started to understand that there might not be any
simple answers to these questions.
However, it wasn't just the tutored peer assess-
ment activities that seem to have had an impact
on the students' learning and understanding.
Data from the online questionnaire shows that as
many as 84 percent of the students marked that
they agreed in fully or to a high degree with the
statement that participating in peer assessment/
review enhanced their learning. Interestingly
enough there were more comments on what they
had learned from assessing their peers than what
they had learnt from being peer assessed. One
of the values of assessing their peers, which was
pointed out by several students, was the fact that
it became obvious to them that the examination
tasks could be tackled in a variety of ways. One
student wrote in a comment that:
It was time consuming but gave me an enormous
amount. To see how one could think in differ-
ent ways made me see different aspects of the
texts and how you can formulate and structure
the presentation of reflections on a subject (in
translation).
When we presented the results from the online
questionnaire to these students we were given even
more feedback. The students told us that they had
found peer assessment/peer review rather time
consuming but that they also felt that it was time
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