Peer assessment at the International Assessment in Higher Education Conference

26 June 2026

Funding provided by the School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences (SBBS) for scholarly activities enabled me to attend the International Assessment in Higher Education Conference in Manchester on 18-19th of June 2026, which allowed me to share my work on peer assessment with scholars in the field. 

I presented my findings regarding individual and group peer assessment, research which was itself generously supported by a Queen Mary Academy Fellowship.  This led to a number of conversations with scholars, both during and after the session, who were interested in this topic, and with whom I would not otherwise have been put in contact. We discussed approaches to supporting peer marking at other higher education institutions, assessment literacy through peer-and self-assessment activities, and the wide range of activities that could implement peer assessment in search of AI-proofing assessment in an authentic manner.  

In addition to my own presentation, I attended several sessions that were invaluable to my understanding of educational scholarship.

In particular, I attended a session by Dr Ruth Johnson focusing on “Applying Psychology to Wicked Problems”, a University of Manchester initiative to bring experiential learning to Psychology programmes. The programme appears to have been well-received by students there, and provides an opportunity for Psychology students to apply their knowledge to real-world problems. At QMUL, Curriculum 2030 has a significant focus on experiential learning and I therefore hope to implement some of the activities discussed in this talk on our Psychology BSc programme. 

I also attended an excellent session on how to approach publications in education-specific journals led by Professor David Boud, who has decades of experience as an educator, scientific author and editor for scholarship journals. The session provided me with exceptionally useful guidance and will impact my approach to writing education papers for publication. 

Finally, keynote speaker Professor David Carless provided insights into approaches to AI in higher education, focusing on differences between human and non-human feedback sources. Specifically, how AI feedback may be able to complement human-provided feedback can feed into our School approach to feedback provision – comments from his research on large cohorts of students relating to tone and feedback anxiety stuck with me in particular, and will enable me to better gauge students’ interaction with their feedback as I grow into the role of Programme Director for the Psychology BSc programme.   

I would like to thank SBBS for supporting me in my scholarly endeavours, as without this funding I would not have been able to expand my understanding of scholarship this extensively, nor would I have been able to meet like-minded individuals at this scale and at different points in their careers.

- Dr Gwijde Maegherman
Programme Director of BSc Psychology, Senior Lecturer in Psychology

BSc Psychology