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

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 selfperceived skill enhancement is further explored. In order to gather research data, thirty-six thirdyear 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


INTRODUCTION
Peer assessment has proved itself as an influential educational approach across the curriculum in higher education. A review of literature carried out by Topping (1998) has pointed out enormous mutual benefits that peer assessment brings to both the assessees and the assessors in three different domains. These include constructive reflection, increased time on task, the attention on essential elements of high-quality work (cognition and metacognition); a sense of ownership, responsibility, motivation, interactivity and empathy for others (affect); teamwork skills, active learning, social and assertion skills (social and transferable skills). Besides, as diverse technological tools and softwares have gained in popularity, online peer feedback emerges as an effective alternative to the traditional approach, which receives positive responses from language learners (DiGiovanni & Nagaswami, 2001;Liou, & Peng, 2009;Bauer, et al, 2009;Moloudi, 2011).
Despite the overwhelming number of studies that confirm the benefits of peer assessment in education, very Published by Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD. Copyright (c) the author(s). This is an open access article under CC BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.8n.5p.52 little attention has been given to technology-facilitated peer assessment in Translation studies to make a shift away from the conventional approach. In the Vietnamese context, there emerge a number of challenges and limitations that teachers and students alike have to confront in a typical translation lesson. Firstly, both students and teachers have to devote much of the class time to theoretical issues and translation tasks, leaving a little time for discussion, feedback and evaluation. Secondly, such a big class size of nearly 40 students makes it almost unfeasible for teachers and students to discuss and feedback all of the translated versions, thus failing to accommodate the learning needs of individual students and to facilitate and monitor collaborative tasks due to in-class time constraints. Thirdly, in the conventional peer assessment, the face-to-face and non-anonymous peer feedback is more likely to make students feel uncomfortable, embarrassed and discouraged in the learning process. Therefore, this assessment format may result in students' reluctance to truthfully critique the quality of their peers' translated work.
Peer Assessment in a Blended Translation Course: Students' Perceptions, Motivation and their  With the availability of cutting-edge educational technologies, digital and electronic formats have turned out to be a viable solution to the traditional approach in enhancing the efficacy of peer assessment (Moloudi, 2011). In terms of affective perceptions, students engaging in online peer review activity carried out by DiGiovanni & Nagaswami (2001) were found to be more motivated and committed in the whole process.
Against this background, there is a gap, however, in the integration of online peer assessment in Translation training program at the tertiary level in the Vietnamese context. Due to this void, there is limited evidence in verifying whether this educational approach is appropriate in such a training program, thus inhibiting language instructors from reaching an adequate understanding about its benefits and challenges in their EFL teaching environment. For this reason, this current study is considered to be innovative in making a contribution to the body of research of online peer assessment in Translation studies. The purpose of this research is to gather data from a Translation training program to explore students' perceptions towards online peer assessment activity. In order to investigate students' motivations in participating in this activity, data were further collected to examine if students exhibit an intrinsic or extrinsic motivation in their performance and engagement. Additionally, this study is intended to gain an insight into the relationship between students' motivations and skill enhancement by examining whether intrinsic or extrinsic motivation could be a significant predictor of self-perceived translation skill improvement.

Peer Assessment
Peer assessment (PA) is defined as "an arrangement in which individuals consider the amount, level, value, worth, quality, or successfulness of the products or outcomes of learning of others of similar status" (Topping, 1998, p. 249). Similarly, Roberts (2006, p.6) describes peer assessment as "the process of having the learners critically reflect upon, and perhaps suggest grades for, the learning of their peers".
PA has been proved to yield a substantial number of benefits for learners including enhancing the quality of learning experience, increasing participation, especially from low-achieving learners (Li & Gao, 2016) and promoting active learning (Baker, 2016;Li & Gao, 2016). Besides, feedback from fellow students are generally available in greater quantity and with greater immediacy than teacher feedback (Topping, 2009). Student evaluators also derive benefits from peer-assessing process since PA enables them to improve their understanding about other students' ideas (Butler & Hodge, 2001;Falchikov, 1995) and to become a more logical thinkers and writers, thereby enhancing evaluators' capability of providing effective feedback (Baker, 2016) and resulting in improvements in their writing (Miao, Badger, & Zhen, 2006).
Recent years have witnessed the increasing application of PA in blended and online learning owing to distinctive characteristics of these learning environments. The most obvious advantage is that online environment allows greater time and space for evaluation (Tsai, Lin, & Yuan, 2002). Furthermore, students are less likely to feel inhibited about providing straightforward feedback to others and are involved in building a learning community (Roberts, 2006). Several researches have been implemented so far to examine the integration of PA into blended and online courses of several disciplines. Wang & Han (2013) conducted a study to explore students' perceptions of PA experiences in an online translation skill development course at tertiary level. Learners did cross-marking, provided feedback anonymously and subsequently completed a survey into their experiences and engagement in the course. Results showed that participants considered PA as a beneficial activity, valued their peer feedbacks and perceived an improvement in their critical thinking. Nevertheless, they did not appreciate the benefits of putting efforts into giving feedback for their peers. Later in 2017, Nguyen carried out a research into exploring students' feedback on his proposed multi-phase evaluation model through peer assessment activities in a blended information technology course. Using a 5-point Likert scale survey, the study suggested that students showed positive perceptions towards PA activities and displayed great interest and engagement in the course.
Recently, Kim-Godwin, Turrise, Lawson, & Scott (2018) employed the Revised Community of Inquiry instrument to have an in-depth exploration of student perceptions of peer evaluation in an online intensive writing course. The results were consistent with prior studies' in terms of learners' positive perceptions of online PA. Participants additionally perceived improvement in their writing skills and learning outcomes. The study also suggested careful planning and ongoing involvement of instructors for successful implementation of online PA activities.

Revised Community of Inquiry Framework (RCoI)
The Community of Inquiry Framework (CoI) has been widely employed as a valid and reliable instrument to measure the quality of blended and online learning environment (Shea, Pickett, & Pelz, 2003). CoI is originally devised by Garrison, Anderson, & Archer (2000) postulating three essential elements -teaching, social and cognitive presence. Teaching presence (TP) relates to the orchestration of instructional management, building understanding and direct instruction and is considered as the foundation of creating a productive community of inquiry. Social presence (SP) is perceived as students' ability to integrate in the community; i.e. the course of study and collaborate and communicate purposefully in a friendly environment and enhance inter-personal relationships. SP has three underpinning factors -emotional expression, open communication and group cohesion. Cognitive presence (CP) refers to students' capacities to construct and confirm knowledge through connections, collaboration and reflection. These three constructs are considered as "crucial prerequisites for a successful higher educational experience" (Garrison et al., 2000, p.87). Nevertheless,  claimed that CoI did not place enough emphasis on IJALEL 8(5):52-60 learners' role, engagement and experience in online learning. They therefore proposed the revised CoI, which added the fourth element coined as learning presence (LP) to incorporate the effects of individual learner attributes. LP is mainly associated with self-efficacy and individual efforts, namely time management, self-discipline or tasks division.

Motivation
A determining factor that affects learners' performance competencies and their interests in learning activities is motivation (Schunk, Pintrich, & Meece, 2008). Greater motivation enhances students' learning experiences and engagement (Zimmerman, 2000). Motivation is categorized into two orientations: intrinsic and extrinsic (Deci & Ryan, 1985). Intrinsically motivated learners perform tasks out of interest and curiosity and these tasks are inherently satisfying for them. On the contrary, extrinsic learners are motivated due to external rewards or positive outcomes such as teachers' or parents' approval or career advantage. Performance quality and learning outcomes have been proved to be different for learners with different orientations (Bénabou & Tirole, 2003;Deci & Ryan, 1985).
Up till now, there have been mixed results about the role of motivation in web-based learning environments. Some research confirmed that motivation was a vital prerequisite for online learning (Hoskins & Van Hoof, 2005;Song, Singleton, Hill, & Koh, 2004) whereas others claimed that motivation (whether intrinsic or extrinsic) did not affect learning outcomes in online learning (Lin, Zhang, & Zheng, 2017) and a low level of motivation was found among online learners (Jaggars, 2014).

Online Peer Assessment and Motivation
Although several researches centered on examining motivation in web-based environments (Hoskins & Van Hoof, 2005;Jaggars, 2014;Lin et al., 2017;Song et al., 2004) and the validity and reliability of online PA (Kim-Godwin et al., 2018;Nguyen, 2017;Wang & Han, 2013), fewer studies have been done to delve into learners' individual psychological traits such as motivation in online PA activities. Of notable interest is a study by Tseng & Tsai (2010) who developed two questionnaires to understand students' self-efficacy and motivation in online PA environment and explore the relationship between two variables. The results showed that students were highly confident and strongly intrinsically motivated to do online PA. They also found a reciprocal relationship between learners' self-efficacy and motivation. Strong self-efficacy led to higher level of intrinsic motivation and in turn, strongly intrinsically motivated students have greater confidence in their PA activities. It is finally concluded that both variables are important predictors of learning performances.
In this research's local context, although there has been a study which examined the benefits of online PA at tertiary level information technology course in Vietnam (Nguyen, 2017), little has been done in translation skill development. Additionally, learners' attributes, especially motivation in online peer assessment environment has not yet received enough attention. Hence, this research is designed to answer the following research questions: 1. What are students' perceptions towards online peer assessment activity in the Translation course? 2. Are students motivated to do online peer assessment activity? If Yes, are they more intrinsically or extrinsically motivated to do this task? 3. Is motivation a predictor of students' perceptions of translational skill development in online peer assessment environment?

Setting and Participants
The sample in this study included 36 third-year students (2 males and 34 females) aged between 21 and 22. These English-majored students enrolled in the 15-week Translation 2 Course taught by the first author in semester 2 of the academic year 2018-2019 at the University of Foreign Language Studies, Danang city, Vietnam. Translation 2 is a three-credit compulsory course offered for enrolled undergraduate students at the Faculty of English. The course aims to develop intermediate translation skills through text analysis, translation practice and translation criticism of authentic English and Vietnamese texts of different types as classified by functions. Five different types of texts covered in the course include advertisements, scientific reports, speeches, regulations, and popular journalism. Online peer assessment, which lasted 5 weeks, was incorporated as a post-class activity and a component of the whole course assessment.

Procedures
As Moodle has many pedagogical and technical advantages over other commercially developed learning management systems, it has been widely adopted in many universities worldwide. The availability, the ease of use, and the effective out-of-class communications with teachers and students are among the strong points that Moodle offers to enable a friendlier learning process for students (Lopes, 2011;Kotzer & Elran, 2012;Goyal & Tambe, 2015). Moreover, in the 'Forum' plug-in, students can receive rapid feedback of their e-communications as automatic notifications about new messages, responses or comments posted on the Forum will be sent to the students' registered email address (Jonnavithula, 2008;Martinho, Almeida, & Teixeira-Dias, 2014;Goyal & Tambe, 2015). Given these advantageous features, the researchers selected Moodle as a Learning Management Platform, in which 'Discussion Forum' Tool was deployed to implement online peer assessment activity in this study.
At the beginning of the study, the students were given a briefing session to make sure that they would be able to clearly understand the requirements of Peer Assessment activity and efficiently navigate and manipulate all the contents on Moodle Learning Platform. Texts that were selected from authentic materials were uploaded onto the platform corresponding to each text type covered in each week. The students were required to complete two sub-tasks individually on a weekly basis. In the Peer Assessment in a Blended Translation Course: Students' Perceptions, Motivation and their Self-perceived Translational Skill Development 55 first sub-task, or Translation task, students were asked to translate two pieces of texts, one from English into Vietnamese, and the other from Vietnamese to English. The second sub-task, or Peer Evaluation task, involved analyzing and evaluating peers' translation work. Students logging in the learning platform with their given student ID number would be guaranteed anonymity throughout the online task. Also, to avoid any translated texts to be left unassessed and to help students receive multiple feedback, students were randomly assigned in groups of three on Moodle to do their cross-evaluation. Using assessment criteria guided by the lecturer, each student in a group was asked to evaluate two pieces of translated work of the other two peers (one English translated text and one Vietnamese translated text). In their feedback posts, students were requested to give overall comments (both strengths and weaknesses), point out and explain the possible translation problems and propose their own translated versions to improve the translation assignments of their peers. As the forum can archive all participants' postings, students could view their peers' translation work as well as evaluation prior to the lecturer's in-class feedback session in each following week.

Instrument and data collection
After five weeks implementing the activity, the students were asked to fill in two questionnaires. The first questionnaire was developed by adapting the Revised Community of Inquiry Framework (RCoI) by  and three open-ended questions to investigate the students' perceptions of online peer assessment (POPA). The RCoI consisted of four domains, namely TP (5 items), SP (4 items), CP (7 items), and LP (5 items) presented in a five-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 5 (Strongly Agree). The second questionnaire, Motivation of Peer Assessment (MOPA) was administered to gather data about the students' motivations in doing peer assessment activity. The MOPA adapted from Tseng & Tsai (2010) included a total of 10 five-point, Likert-type items, with 5 items in Intrinsic Motivation scale and 5 items in Extrinsic Motivation scale. The entire procedure of peer assessment activity and data collection is briefly summarized in Figure 1.

Data Analysis
The collected data were then analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics Software, version 25. Regarding research question 1, the POPA Questionnaire data including RCoI and open-ended questions were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. Concerning research question 2, descriptive statistics was used to analyze two scales of MOPA questionnaire. To answer research question 3, correlation test was used to examine the relationships between two scales of MOPA and Cognitive Presence in RCoI framework. The researchers selected only CP other than three remaining domains of RCoI to investigate its relationship with Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivations for the following reasons. From the researchers' personal observations, in the traditional face-to-face approach, many students felt demotivated and struggling in this challenging course meanwhile due to the limited class time, both teachers and students were always in an awful rush for the feedback and evaluation of students' translation tasks. This hinders translation teachers from catering for all ability ranges of individual students in a class. Consequently, regarding the third research question, the researchers expect to specifically look at students' motivations and their perceived levels of translational skill improvement involved in online PA activity. Therefore, the results of this study are very significant for the teachers to consider the adoption of online PA in improving translation learning among students in future courses in the local context.

Research Question 1: What are Students' Perceptions Towards Online Peer Assessment Activity in the Translation Course?
The RCoI questionnaire adapted from  was employed to measure students' overall perceptions towards doing online peer assessment task. The scale had a high level of internal consistency, as determined by a Cronbach's alpha of 0.87. The coefficient reliability values for each domain indicated a moderate reliability level with α ranging from 0.5 -0.75 (Hinton, Brownlow, Mc Murray, & Cozens, 2004) as verified in Table 1.  The results also indicated a high mean score (M = 4.03) for students' overall perceptions of online peer assessment experiences as stated in Table 2. This shows generally positive learning experiences using PA in the Translation Course.
The questionnaire additionally further explored students' learning experiences in four specific domains, including TP, SP, CP and LP. As the results revealed in Table 3, participants' responses to TP, SP and CP fell into the upper intermediate category, followed by LP with intermediate value.
Among four domains, Teaching Presence yielded the highest outcome (M = 4.21), indicating that students were highly satisfied with the way the teacher designed, monitored and facilitated the course. Specifically, Item 2 (The instructor provided clear instructions on how to participate in Translation and Peer Evaluation Activity on the Moodle Platform) and Item 5 (The instructor encouraged participants to give feedback, make comments and pose questions in Peer Evaluation Activity) had the highest mean scores among all 21 items with M = 4.31 for both.
The second domain with productive result was Social Presence (M = 4.05), noting that students' learning was greatly enhanced by meaningful interaction in a comfortable social climate within a community of learners. They particularly appreciated the opportunities to share their translations with other course participants and to identify their mistakes, strengths and weaknesses from their peer comments when doing online translation tasks (Item 9 with M = 4.19).
With respect to Cognitive Presence, students had opportunities to create, co-construct knowledge through online peer assessment tasks and to reflect the knowledge acquired during the course (M = 4.03). Two items that were highly ranked related to motivation (I felt motivated to participate in Peer Evaluation activity) and competence improvement (Online Peer Evaluation permitted me to improve my translation competence out of the class time) with M = 4.19 for both. Three open-ended questions were also added into the questionnaire to delve further into students' perceptions in areas of overall learning experiences in translation course, their most favourite aspect of online PA activity, and their suggestion for future incorporation of online PA into translation course. The majority of participants reported rewarding experiences when they performed online peer assessment tasks. Two emerging beneficial aspects consist of providing and receiving feedback from peers and having meaningful interaction with course participants, which are also the two most preferred areas of online PA. Some students witnessed substantial improvement in their writing and translation skills and pointed out they had more practice opportunities doing online peer assessment compared with face-to-face approach. They were also satisfied when they could later retrieve the translations for reviewing in Moodle. Some students contended that online PA task has enabled them to develop critical thinking skill. All of the students in the course perceived that online peer assessment activity needs to be integrated in the future translation course.

Research Question 2: Are students Motivated to do
Online PA Activity? If Yes, are they more Intrinsically or Extrinsically Motivated to do this Task? Table 4 presents Cronbach's alpha values of 0.81 for intrinsic motivation and 0.80 for extrinsic motivation. These values showed that the questionnaire had high reliability in investigating intrinsic and extrinsic motivations among students in online PA activity.
Descriptive results revealed high questionnaire scores, indicating students' positive responses to the two motivation scales. As clearly seen from Table 4, students were more motivated by intrinsic factors to participate in online PA environment than extrinsic ones, with M = 4.05 for the former, and M = 3.12 for the latter.
Regarding intrinsic scale, the highest intrinsic motivators among students were equally reflected in their desire to get more ideas from peers (IN1) and to receive opinions from peers or teachers when finishing an assignment (IN4) (M = 4.22). Their expectation to learn something even when getting low scores (IN5) is the second highest motivator (M = 4.17). Also, with high response scores, students reported they were triggered to learn more in online PA activity when offered the chance to review peers' work (IN2) and  The extrinsic scale, on the other hand, witnessed lower results. Students' motivation to receive only comments from the teacher (EX6) and to become a diligent student when completing the task (EX9) shared virtually equal results of mean scores (M = 3.39 and M = 3.36 respectively). Ranked third and fourth in the scale, students' responses showed that opinions from teachers are more important than those from peers (EX8) and they completed the task to simply meet the course requirement (EX7). Noticeably, a low mean score was seen in the perception that they would learn nothing if they received a low peer score on their work (EX10) (M = 2.81).

Research Question 3: Is Motivation a Predictor of Students' Perceptions of Translational Skill Development in Online Peer Assessment Environment?
Pearson's correlation coefficient test was used to investigate the correlation between students' two motivation scales and their perceived levels of translational skill development involved in online PA environment (Table 5). Preliminary analyses were conducted to make sure that there were no violations in the assumptions of normality, linearity and homoscedasticity.
The results indicated that there was a significant positive correlation between Intrinsic Motivation and Cognitive Presence (r = 0.38, p < 0.05). Students who were more intrinsically motivated perceived higher levels of improving their translation skills by reflecting on what they had learnt throughout the course and identifying their strengths and weaknesses of their own translated work in an online PA environment. However, it is worth noticing that no significant correlation between Extrinsic Motivation and Cognitive Presence was found (r = 0.13, ns).

Students' Overall Perceptions Towards Online Peer Assessment Activity
The significant finding of the study was students' high rating to online peer assessment activity in Translation 2 course, which is in coherence with previous research into online peer assessment (Nguyen, 2017;Wang & Han, 2013). Participants also expressed positive perceptions of all investigated domains, namely Teaching Presence, Social Presence, Cognitive Presence and Learning Presence.
The majority of students were highly satisfied with the teacher' roles in designing, implementing and monitoring online PA activity and derived great benefits from the teacher's clear guidance and communication on learning activities and assessment criteria for online PA tasks. They broadly agreed that teachers actively facilitated students to provide comments and feedback in the course. This is consistent with prior research underscoring the critical role of teacher in ensuring the effective implementation of online PA tasks (Kim-Godwin, Turrise, Lawson, & Scott, 2018).
In view of Social Presence, most students contended that doing online peer assessment has allowed them to have greater freedom and comfort in providing more genuine and reliable feedback. Students found that they could freely express their ideas and communicate them more effectively in online platform compared with face-to-face mode. This is congruent with Roberts' findings (2006) that online PA enabled students to make more straightforward feedback. Moreover, the opportunity of sharing and learning from other students' translations has fostered a collaborative learning community within participants, thereby supporting productive participation (Larreamendy-Joerns & Leinhardt, 2006) and promoting their learning experiences (Li & Gao, 2016).
Cognitive Presence also received a high level of satisfaction among learners. Most learners reported their interest and motivation was greatly generated owing to their engagement in the assessment process of the Translation course. This is compatible with Teng (2018) suggesting that peer assessment can be employed to assist students in learning by getting them involved in the process. Participants also found it useful to receive rapid feedback from their peers, who shared similar learning experiences rather than from the teacher only. The feedback also helped them to identify their strengths and weaknesses, widen knowledge and accumulate experience. These outcomes further confirm findings from prior studies (Butler & Hodge, 2001;Falchikov, 1995;Miao, Badger, & Zhen, 2006;Topping, 2009;Topping, 2018;Wang & Han, 2013) in the sense that quantity increase and greater immediacy of peer feedback add the power to enhancing learners' understanding, knowledge and performance. Furthermore, online peer assessment task has allowed learners to develop their writing, translation and critical thinking skills and consolidate and reflect the knowledge acquired in the course. This result echoes White's (2009) indicating that while students can benefit from being assessed by their fellows, peer assessment is more about learning than about assessment.
With respect to Learning Presence, students could take responsibility over their own studying and deploy some learning strategies to optimize their learning outcome. These involved generating attainable goals, identifying their learning challenges and seeking effective learning methods by doing further reading and having critical reflection on their translation work. Participants also learnt to monitor their own learning progress and set achievements for their task completion. Notwithstanding, they encountered some challenges mainly regarding seeking interaction and assistance from their peers to articulate their gaps in knowledge and time management. Pool, Reitsma, & Van den Berg (2017) and  also reported on the same findings in which most students felt lost switching to a new learning environment condition where they had to coordinate with other students. Students' struggle with time-management skill could be entirely explicable due to the fact that they had to fulfil the requirements of various courses in the semester. On the whole, most students were highly satisfied and perceived their self-improvement in doing online peer assessment activity. They definitely recommend the integration of this useful component into future translation course.

Students' Motivation in doing Online Peer Assessment Activity
Learning motivation, which has long been a crucial research topic in education, is believed to be an indispensable factor for students' active learning (Law & Breznik, 2017;Law, Lee, & Yu, 2010;Ngan & Law, 2015) and an enabler for students' achievements and academic success (Linnenbrink & Pintrich, 2002;Weiner, 1990;Lynch, 2006). The results of this study showed a high level of motivation among students in participating in an online PA environment. This agrees well with the studies conducted by Tseng & Tsai (2010) and Law, Geng, & Li (2019), which supported that students' higher motivation helped enhance their active engagement in online learning tasks.
In terms of two motivation scales, previous studies yielded results that confirmed the consistently dominant role of intrinsic motivation in students' performance and engagement in online learning activities including online discussion (Hew & Cheung, 2008;Xie, DeBacker, & Ferguson, 2006;Xie & Ke, 2011). Little research in the literature has been done to investigate intrinsic motivation among participants in a technology-facilitated peer assessment environment. A noticeable study by Tseng & Tsai (2010) verified that students who were motivated by internal factors highly engage in online peer assessment. Supporting the findings by Tseng & Tsai (2010), this study provides a valuable complement to the literature by revealing students' higher responses on the intrinsic scale, which asserts that students valued intrinsic factors more importantly than extrinsic ones. In other words, the intrinsically -motivated students exhibited their performance out of interest, enjoyment or challenge, thus triggering the desire to undertake the PA activity for its own sake.

Motivation as a Predictor of Students' Perceptions of Translational Skill Development in Online Peer Assessment Environment
The study delved into the correlation between two motivational scales measured on MOPA Questionnaire and students' self-perceived translation development assessed by CP. The findings highlighted that intrinsic motivation stood out to be the significant predictor of self-perceived translation skill improvement. Meanwhile there was no statistically significant relationship between extrinsic motivation and cognitive presence, which suggested a negligible impact of external factors perceived by students. In other words, decoupled from extrinsic factors such as grades, course requirements or rewards, participants in this study desired to experience deep learning in a PA task for its inherent satisfaction and challenge (Ryan & Deci, 2000) and perceived a genuine progress in their translation competence.
Previous studies have affirmed the strong connection between intrinsic motivation and skill development. Intrinsic motivation is proven to predict students' skill development including problem-solving skills (Sproule et al., 2013), as well as students' willingness to persist in problem solving (Song & Grabowski, 2006). In a similar vein, Ryan & Deci (2000) contend that intrinsic motivation performs a crucial element in cognitive, social and psychological development as engaging in the tasks with inherent interests clearly leads to the enhancement of one's knowledge and skills. Consequently, the results in this study are consistent with previous researches on intrinsic motivation and skill improvement in educational contexts, specifically in this Translation 2 course which aims to provide students with the skills to analyze and translate the texts as well as skills to identify and solve the problems during translation process.
In translation studies, the question of intrinsic motivation in language learning among students has received scarce attention. The study by Núñez & Bolaños-Medina (2018) revealed intrinsic motivation as the predictor of self-perceived problem-solving efficacy in a Translation and Interpreting undergraduate program, yet overlooking the role of intrinsic motivation in an online learning environment. The results of the current study, therefore, make a significant contribution to the literature by highlighting the strong correlation between intrinsic motivation and students' self-perceived translation skill improvement in an online PA activity.
Moreover, the findings entail some pedagogical implications that teachers and instructors should consider in translation learning and teaching. With regard to the perspective of situational interests embedded in intrinsic motivation, Mitchell (1993) suggested 'catch and hold' factors to motivate students' learning basing on the features of a learning context. He claimed that 'catch' factors include innovative or novel instructional techniques or aids while 'hold' factors refer to making instructional content meaningful and useful enough for the students to engage in. In a word, it is an implication of this study that intrinsically-based motivational strategies on online PA environment need to be considered in the course design and implementation phase for the benefit of enhancing students' sense of translation competence.

CONCLUSION
The present study set out to explore how students perceived the integration of online PA activity in a blended Translation course and if they were motivated to be engaged in this activity. The relationship between motivation and translational skill development was also further examined. The findings found that students displayed a high level of positive perceptions and motivation in online peer assessment task. They were strongly interested to actively engage in a collaborative learning community where they have reaped substantial benefits in terms of knowledge and skill development not only from their classmates' feedback but also from the process of Peer Assessment in a Blended Translation Course: Students' Perceptions, Motivation and their Self-perceived Translational Skill Development 59 giving feedback itself. The data also revealed a significantly higher level of intrinsic motivation than extrinsic one among participants and those with stronger intrinsic motivation perceived greater improvement in their translation competence. The external factors were proved not to make any impact on the level of their involvement into online PA activity. The results of this study yield potential implications for Translation training courses. Online peer assessment can be considered as a beneficial and meaningful activity for learners to enhance not only their specialized knowledge but also translation, writing and critical thinking skills. The opportunity to study in a collaborative environment and to receive immediacy feedback with straightforward critique from the peers adds important values to the learning process. As for teachers, online PA would empower them to take on facilitative roles as well as to tackle with the continuing and daunting challenges of providing feedback for students with great quantity. Another implication is that Translation course designers should take learners' intrinsic motivation factor into account for the optimal integration of online PA activity. The current research is limited with a small sample of students and the time constraints on conducting PA in online learning environment (5 weeks). This was due to a substantial amount of course content needed to be covered in the semester. Notwithstanding, this study has been the first comprehensive investigation of learners' perceptions and motivation towards online PA implementation and has provided useful insights into its future adoption in Translation courses in the local context. Further empirical research with greater sample and longer research length is needed to address this research's limitations.