Determining the Consistency of Student Grading in a Hybrid Business Course using a LMS and Statistical Software

Extant literature asserted that peer assessments improved learning but only a few studies had addressed the student rating consistency issue and not had evaluated this within a Learning Management System (LMS). The researcher explored how to conduct peer assessments in Moodle LMS for a hybrid-mode business course (N=90 students) which required 270 (25-page) reports. Rater agreement statistical theory was applied to test the consistency of student peer assessments. The resulting coefficient was 0.79 and statistically significant. A pair-wise t-test and a nonparametric Mann Whitley u-test confirmed there was no significant difference between the student ratings and the scores given by the professor on the same assignments. Nonparametric Spearman correlation was very high between each student rating coefficient as compared to the score given in Moodle, which indicated the LMS was reliable in providing a grade for the quality of student peer assessment. A protocol was developed using SPSS to calculate a peer assessment inter-rater agreement consistency indicator since this was not available in Moodle. Determining the Consistency of Student Grading in a Hybrid Business Course using a LMS and Statistical Software