Are peer evaluations after group projects beneficial?

Peer evaluations are supposed to be the “right thing to do” when you want your students to learn and reflect. But, when you’re flooded with tons of responses expressing issues that are now too late to address, you start to wonder “what’s the point?” It’s not only until after you see your student’s responses that you realize they needed help and you were unable to offer support when they needed it.

A positive feedback loop is necessary for both students and instructors to be able to learn and improve. In other words, feedback should be exchanged between team members and their instructor. While many university classes do incorporate this, oftentimes it is only facilitated at the end and/or halfway through the term. For students, receiving feedback at the end of an assignment gives them insight, but doesn’t give them the opportunity to immediately adapt and learn. On the flip side, if instructors don’t understand what needs to be addressed early on, they won’t have enough time to be able to step in and take action.

To help you turn this around for your students, we have outlined several suggestions to consider when trying to incorporate feedback into group projects.

Facilitate multiple feedback sessions.

When assigning group projects, it can be very helpful to have designated points throughout the project where students can evaluate each other. Some ways of facilitating this would be to:

• Have students submit several peer reflection deliverables at the beginning, middle and end of the project.
• Designate class time for students to get together (in person or in a breakout room virtually) to give each other verbal or written feedback.
• Provide students with a worksheet including prompts that they can follow in order to evaluate each other.

Have a way of tracking individual contributions.

There are several ways to track the individual contributions of each team member during a group project. This could be by:

1. Assigning students to complete certain deliverables individually.

When laying out the group project scope and expectations, it could be wise to outline certain deliverables that students need to complete throughout the duration of the project. This could be done by:

• Assigning short write-ups pertaining to their knowledge of the topic.
• Online discussion forums.
• Have each student submit a final paper relating to the topic of the project.

The submission of individual work encourages students to gain a better understanding of the course material and as a result, it could also bring the team closer together.

2. Using a project management platform to track progress.

There are numerous platforms such as Asana, Monday.com, and Ensightful that allow students to organize themselves digitally and sometimes be monitored by their instructor. The appeal and benefit of using these kinds of platforms are so that students can:

• Visually track what tasks need to be completed.
• Know who is responsible for completing each task.
• Get instructor feedback.

So, what’s the consensus?

All in all, when done correctly, peer evaluations are very beneficial for student learning and for instructors to improve their teaching. As an instructor, it is important to try new methods to see what works best for you and your students. It is your job to keep learning with your students and to improve education one day at a time.

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