Analyzing Peer Assessment Claims for Team Projects in Engineering Courses

Abstract

Ten distinct claims about peer assessment system user perceptions or actions were found to have been made by researchers regarding peer assessments in a team based project. The claims include: the presence of “Free Riders”, the ability for peer assessments to motivate students, biased assessments because of social acceptance, raters noticing peers’ lack of appropriate skills, positive rater reactions to the specific peer assessment system used, improvements in confidence and skill in rating because of practice rating exercises, biased assessments because of Halo error and social pressures, raters resisting peer assessments because of perceived bias, raters perceiving peer assessments to be unhelpful, and raters hesitation to assess peers because of perceived lack of authority. Several thousand anonymous and volunteer verbatim comments from a peer assessment system used in engineering courses were categorized based on the above claims, and analyzed in an attempt to support or dispute these claims. Only two claims in this study were found to be strongly supported in the verbatim comments made when completing peer reviews (Free Riders and Missing Skills) and no claims on peer assessment can be disputed based on the available evidence. The presence of Free Riders is the most significant peer assessment problem identified in the verbatim comments that instructors must address.