A Reflective Evaluation of Group Assessment

There is a general agreement in the literature that groupwork helps to develop important interpersonal and personal skills (Race, 2001; Visram & Joy, 2003; Elliot & Higgins, 2005; Kench et al, 2008). However, one of the problems with groupwork for both students and lecturers is how the work should be assessed (Parsons & Kassabova, 2002). The possibility of having ‘free-riders’ and the difficulty of fairly awarding marks to reflect the level of students’ contribution to a group output are some of the key problem areas in groupwork assessment (Race, 2001). Peer assessment is seen as one of the methods to deal with these problems. It can generally involve students assessing each other’s level of contribution to the group’s output (Visram & Joy, 2003). This paper provides our reflection on the use of peer assessment on a student group project.