PEER-BASED KNOWLEDGE EVALUATION
When nonexperts code their knowledge into a form that is later refined by an expert, their knowledge differences may prevent them from comprehending the results, even when the refinement is of high quality. Since experts often anchor the knowledge refinement process to knowledge that nonexperts may not be able to access, such feedback often leads to misunderstanding by nonexpert users. Moreover, explanations that are helpful to experts may not necessarily be helpful to nonexperts.
Contrary to intuition, similarities among peers can actually facilitate knowledge refinement. When the intended audience consists of nonexperts, a group of peers is often better than experts in providing evaluations and feedback on peer-developed materials. Peers are more likely to share knowledgebase, experience, and problems; such socially shared cognition enables them to establish common ground that stimulates development of mutual knowledge, along with an error-correction mechanism. Because peers are closer to one another cognitively and behaviorally, they better understand what they need in a codified piece of knowledge than do experts.
The apparent superiority of peers is presumably due to nonexperts being better at detecting or diagnosing problems that are relevant to their peers. They are more accurate than experts at understanding other nonexperts’ problems because they use more cues and more exhaustive search strategies and do not restrict themselves exclusively to private knowledge. These qualities are likely to make nonexperts more adept at coaching their peers in problem solving. Peer benefits are augmented through the interaction of multiple peers. The value of multiple peers was recognized in [10], observing that large groups of average people can make better decisions than those made by a single expert when they contribute diverse unbiased opinions. When multiple peers participate in knowledge refinement, the aggregated benefits can be significant. One possible reason is that multiple peers create a larger search space for potential problems in the target knowledge; more reviewers find more problems. Also, multiple peers can make a serious problem in the material more salient for the contributor.