Stakeholder perceptions of online peer mark moderation in university teamwork

Peer assessment can provide a convenient solution to the problem of marking individual students fairly in group assignments. The developing methodology has numerous benefits for enhanced student learning and transferable skill development. Peer Assessment is not, however, universally embraced: critics cite potential drawbacks including collusion and vindictive marking and this paper briefly reviews the state of the art; it goes on to describe a new web-based peer mark moderation tool and outline the results of a quantitative research project based upon its use. Whilst much of the received data confirms and updates previous literature, important new insights are gained into the thoughts of students, who appear to recognise and value the fairness they believe peer mark moderation can offer. Statistical analysis verifies the lack of collusion associated with the web-based system and students comment positively on the system’s anonymity and its ability to recognise different levels of achievement within teams