Peer assessment: is it fair?

Abstract

A common method of peer assessment is to have team members quantify their team members’ contribution. Opponents to this method of peer assessment are concerned about: the impact on minorities within teams (such as female or international students), how often individuals overly reward themselves, and how often team members indicate equal contribution. A web-based peer assessment system has been in use in a capstone project course for over two years with over 25 teams each year, offering an opportunity to investigate suggestions from the literature that this method of peer assessment has undesirable distribution patterns.