Best practices for project-based learning
Practical tools and tips for supporting student teamwork in project courses, without adding extra stress to your teaching.
What should I consider if I’m planning to use peer assessment?
Peer assessment can help promote fair contribution and strengthen learning in student teams, if implemented with care. This section explores how to use it to evaluate participation in group work and how different grading strategies affect its impact.
General considerations
Peer assessment is a flexible pedagogical approach that can be utilised in a variety of ways. This section discusses the use of peer assessment as an evaluation method of students’ participation in the efforts of their project team. More specifically, the method focuses on written peer assessment assignments, rather than more general peer feedback approaches that are discussed in-depth in later segments.
Peer assessment can help encourage equal participation of all team members in the project. In all group work contexts, there is a risk that some members of the team do not put in the same effort. This can cause issues with team dynamics, such as frustration and conflicts, and if members contribute disproportionately to the project, it naturally reduces the team's output. However, if every team member is informed of the fact that peer assessment will have an influence on the final grade, they will have a clear incentive to participate.
It should be noted that the incentive does not always work as intended. In these cases, peer assessment can function as an instrument to reward the members who put in more effort and sanction those who did less. In relation to this, it should be underlined that peer assessment should not be considered mainly as a punishment for inadequate effort; first and foremost, it should reward those who are willing to walk the extra mile.
Regardless of the approach you take, clearly define how peer assessment influences or can influence the final grade. Even if you plan on using a grading system with an element of teacher discretion at play, some default guidelines should still be defined at least internally. By default, it is a good idea to compliment peer assessment with self-assessment. This fosters personal reflection and provides you, the teacher, with an additional viewpoint to consider and refer to when grading. Finally, be clear about the visibility of the feedback: is peer feedback visible to other students, or only to the team? This can influence the feedback itself, which is an important element to consider, too.
Quick recommendations
- If the assessment includes other elements beyond the project work, the scored assignment strategy is likely the clearest option for both you and the students. In this case, the peer assessment form can include a more comprehensive selection of elements to assess.
- If the assessment consists of solely project group submissions, direct influence can be suitable option. In such cases, it is advisable to create a more simplified peer assessment form.
- A well-functioning peer assessment system is built on the assumption that each team member completes the peer assessment. Therefore, it should be a mandatory part of the course.
- Regardless of the system you choose to implement, remember to leave room for explicit teacher discretion in case course participants want to try to ‘game the system’.
Methods and tools
There are two different approaches to the influence of peer assessment on the final grade: 1) peer assessment directly lowers or raises the final grade or 2) peer assessment as a separate scored assignment which influences final grade through the granted points.
In the direct influence approach, a student's grade is first calculated without consideration of the peer assessment. Based on the results of the peer assessment, the grade is then either raised or lowered.
In terms of benefits, this method imposes a clear and direct impact on the final grade, ensuring a predictable, genuine impact on the final results, as long as sufficient justifications are provided to the participants. Furthermore, this approach can ease the use of case-by-case discretion if no actual scoring method is used.
From the perspective of challenges, given the significant impact on the grade, it is crucial to clearly define the criteria for sufficient justifications for raising or lowering a grade. To support this, the peer assessment form should have a relatively simple structure. For example in SCI-C1002 User centric product development course, peer review form asks respondents to rate their teammates efforts on the scale of below average, average or above average plus a short text justification. By default, if a participant receives three above or below average ratings, the final grade is altered. This simple system has worked very well so far.
In the scored assignment approach, peer assessment is considered as a scored task, and the result is incorporated into the participant's overall points, which ultimately determine the final grade.
This method allows and encourages the use of a more multifaceted peer assessment form. When complemented by a high-level of transparency, where students can see each other's assessments, participants can receive detailed feedback on their performance. This, in turn, can enhance learning outcomes. However, it is also possible to use the method without showing individual peer reviews to recipients, but rather an aggregate score. This approach is socially less intimidating and thus preferable in some situations. This is the approach taken in the JOIN-E3200 Life Science technologies project course. There, peer review includes two questions: 1) how did your teammate contribute to your project tasks (0-5 rating) and 2) how did your teammate contribute to your team atmosphere (0-5 rating), complemented with short text justification request. For each team member the answers are averaged and this composes 20% of the overall points.
Since this approach influences the final grade indirectly through the accumulation of points, it is possible that the final grade is not influenced by the peer assessment, even in cases of free-riding, if the participant and their group have scored well on other tasks. However, the peer reviews can give one the signal to examine person's actual project participation more closely to ensure that course requirements have actually been met.
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