Peer Assessment in a Blended Translation Course: Students’ Perceptions, Motivation and their Self-perceived Translational Skill Development

Abstract

Peer assessment (PA) has become as an influential educational tool in higher education for many years. However, there is little evidence about technology-facilitated PA in the field of Translation. Therefore, this study attempts to fill in the gap in the literature with an aim to scrutinize the students’ perceptions and motivation toward the adoption of a five-week online PA activity in a Translation course. The correlation between students’ intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and self-perceived skill enhancement is further explored.  In order to gather research data, thirty-six third-year students were asked to respond to two questionnaires about the perceptions and motivation of online PA in a five-point Likert-type scale. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used to analyze the collected data. A number of findings have been revealed by the end of the study. Firstly, the students exhibited a highly positive perception and a high level of motivation in participating in this online task. Secondly, throughout the activity, the participants valued intrinsic motivational factors more importantly than extrinsic ones. Thirdly, the findings highlighted that intrinsic motivation stood out to be the significant predictor of self-perceived translation skill improvement, whereas no statistically significant relationship between extrinsic motivation and a sense of skill enhancement suggested a negligible impact of external factors perceived by students. Potential implications for translation pedagogy and research are also included in the study. The results of this pioneering study, consequently, add to the scarce literature in the local translation landscape by proposing a possible alternative to the face-to-face peer assessment format as well as paving the way for future peer assessment practice and research in blended learning courses.