Creating a Community of Learners: Peer Assessment in the Hospitality Classroom

Abstract

A goal of hospitality and tourism education is to graduate students ready to enter the workforce with intellectual and practical competencies which include inquiry and analysis, critical and creative thinking, written and oral communication, teamwork and problem solving. In response, educators are seeking engaging teaching methodologies to enable success in the classroom.

Participatory action research was conducted over two semesters to review the pedagogical objective of peer evaluations and to examine the relationship to classroom learning through presentations. Based on the results of the study, it is recommended to implement peer evaluation into the hospitality curriculum to meet the competencies required of today’s hospitality industry. Peer evaluations increased classroom engagement and the ability of the learners to make independent judgments of their own and others' work.