Teaching peer review reflective processes in accounting

Amidst increased calls for public accountability in the Higher Education sector at the global level (Taylor 2011) and the current move by the OECD to rank universities globally based on the quality of their teaching and learning outcomes (OECD 2010), universities have prioritised the need for increased transparency in assessment practices (Ecclestone 2001); (Mansell et al. 2009). The precise explicit systems and procedures articulated within this accountability agenda have often, however, seriously neglected the quality of student learning outcomes and failed to engage students, with the result that current assessment practice has been evaluated as seriously deficient (Angelo 1996); (Biggs 2003); (Biggs and Tang 2007); (Race 2003).

Innovative curriculum and assessment design, which includes new paradigms of student engagement and learning and pedagogically sound technologies, have the capacity to provide some measure of relief from these internal and external tensions by significantly enhancing the learning experience for an increasingly culturally and educationally diverse and time-poor population of students as highlighted by Huijser et al. (2008). Any discussion of the use of a peer review process within an e-learning environment is, therefore, both important and timely.

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