Legal History and Student Involvement in the Assessment Process

Assessment has been described by Graham Gibbs as “the most powerful lever teachers have to influence the way students respond to courses and behave as learners”, but is legal education ready to embrace the possibilities of making law students active participants in the assessment process? This article explores our experiences of developing both peer assessment models and encouraging students to generate their own questions in the context of a module in Legal History on the undergraduate law degree at Northumbria University. In adopting innovative forms of assessment, it is important to understand why the new practices are being adopted and also to be able to justify those practices; hence, the article addresses potential benefits and pitfalls of student participation in peer marking or grading and explores how peer assessment models can be grounded in assessment and learning theory.