Students’ Perceptions of Peer Evaluation in Project Work

To capitalise on the benefits of group work and at the same time alleviate the potential negative effect of benefiting from collective effort without contributing equally (also referred to as free-riding) and internal conflict, this project was conducted for the following purposes: design an approach to peer assessment of individual contributions to group work, evaluate student perceptions on the proposed approach, and refine the approach. Under the proposed peer evaluation approach, the final project grade of an individual student is the sum of two components: the group project mark awarded by the lecturer and the contribution of the individual student to the team as assessed by other team members. Fifty-eight full-time computing students taking the module ‘Project Work’ at a post-secondary institution in Hong Kong were involved in this study. Data were collected from a questionnaire survey and a focus group interview. Findings revealed that participants strongly agreed that the proposed peer evaluation method was fair and could motivate them to work harder. This project provides a tested and workable peer evaluation approach for group projects at the post-secondary level, as well as maximises the learning values that group projects can bring to students. .