Peer-Assessment and group-composition in PBL: a case study

The Engineering Investigation project is a second year Civil Engineering PBL project at Coventry University that presents particular challenges due to the diversity of the cohort. The project has been run for two consecutive years. In the first year of implementation students freely formed their own groups, and they coalesced around commonality: part-timers worked with part-timers, international students worked with international students, etc. This led to a very large dispersion in the marks attained. In the second year of implementation, students were allocated groups. These groups mixed part-time with full-time students, UK/EU nationals with international students and so forth. This was introduced in order to promote peer-to-peer learning. Peer-assessment was used as a tool to differentiate individuals’ contribution in both instances. A survey was carried out to investigate students’ experience with allocated groups, gauge the benefits to the learning experience and assess the perceived fairness of peer-assessment as an individualising process.