How did students feel about their audience(s) in an online peer-assessed writing task?

Peer assessment (PA) is widely used in higher education, including within academic writing provision. However, students who participate in PA activities are faced with a very different audience to when they produce work that will only be assessed by a teacher. Understanding the nature of this difference, as well
as student perceptions of their peers as an audience, appears crucial to ensuring that these activities are meaningful educational experiences for participants. This presentation will therefore consider the nature of audience in PA tasks, and then examine student perceptions of their peers as an audience for their academic writing. It will draw on questionnaire and interview data collected an English-medium university in China, to provide suggestions for how audience-related considerations might inform the design of PA tasks.