The main form of assessment used in Turing College is in-person reviews (also known as project reviews or reviews). The reviewers could be either other learners, junior or senior team leads. These reviews are scheduled via our platform and are a requirement in order to progress on to new projects and modules.
Besides being a way to measure progress, peer reviews are also a way to learn. Research has shown that by assessing and guiding others, learners significantly increase their own understanding of a topic as well. Furthermore, reviewing the work of others is a daily task for many people working in the IT field (code reviews being the most common example of this type of task). Practicing this skill is another way for our learners to get experience that will be relevant to their jobs later on.
For each project, an individual number of required project reviews by learners (or JTLs) and STLs will be set. In order to accelerate the progress of those who are ahead in the program, sometimes senior team leads (STLs) may be used to do a review instead of a peer. However, peers will not be able to do the review which require an STL.
In order to be reviewed by another learner, you will need to spend a review point. And you get these review points by reviewing others. With this system, every single learner needs to both give and receive reviews in order to progress through the program.
How code review looks like?
Once a review is scheduled, the reviewer is given a short summary of the project together with guidelines for reviewing it before the meeting. During the call learner go through their project while sharing their screen, presenting how each part was done and what insights were achieved. The reviewer asks questions to check whether the learner really understands relevant parts of the project, and assigns a rating from 1-5 for each of the evaluation criteria. On average, a review like this takes 40 minutes to complete, but the time can differ based on the project and amount of feedback.