Choosing a Better Moment to Assign Reviewers in Peer Assessment: The Earlier the Better, or the Later the Better?

Peer assessment continues to be a topic of interest in the educational arena for decades, especially with the popularity of MOOC in recent years. However, the reviewer assignment moment, which may affect the process efficiency and learning proactiveness reward, lacks appropriate consideration. In this study, we propose three reviewer assignment algorithms, postassignment, pre-assignment, and submission-queue, integrated with the educational peer code review system developed for the purpose of programming language learning. We compare and analyze the algorithms performance qualitatively according to processing efficiency and proactiveness reward to learners. In order to measure the three algorithms quantitatively, we carry out one preliminary investigation involving students in a programming course at a Chinese university. The results indicate that submission-queue has predominant advantages in both proactiveness reward and process efficiency relative to the other two. Moreover, data reveals that active students are more sensitive to reviewer assignment moment algorithms than the inactive ones.