Peer Rating for Feedback in Group Projects

The National Student Survey (NSS) in the UK has since 2005 questioned final year<br/>undergraduate students on a broad range of issues relating to their university experience.<br/>Across disciplines and universities students have expressed least satisfaction in the areas of<br/>assessment and feedback. In response to these results many educational practitioners have<br/>reviewed and revised their procedures and the UK Higher Education Academy (HEA) has<br/>produced guidelines of best practice to assist academics in improving these specific areas.<br/>The Product Design and Development (PDD) degree at Queen’s University Belfast is<br/>structured with an integrated curriculum with group Design Build Test (DBT) projects as the<br/>core of each year of the undergraduate programme. Based on the CDIO syllabus and<br/>standards the overall learning outcomes for the programme are defined and developed in a<br/>staged manner, guided by Bloom’s taxonomy of learning domains.<br/>Feedback in group DBT projects, especially in relation to the development of personal and<br/>professional skills, represents a different challenge to that of individual assignment feedback.<br/>A review of best practice was carried out to establish techniques which could be applied to<br/>the particular context of the PDD degree without modification and also to identify areas<br/>where a different approach would need to be applied.<br/>A revised procedure was then developed which utilised the structure of the PDD degree to<br/>provide a mechanism for enhanced feedback in group project work, while at the same time<br/>increasing student development of self and peer evaluation skills. Key to this improvement<br/>was the separation of peer ratings from assessment in the perception of the students and the<br/>introduction of more frequent face to face feedback interviews.<br/>This paper details the new procedures developed and additional issues which have been<br/>raised and addressed, with reference to the published literature, during 3 years of operation.