Exploring the role of online peer-assessment as a tool of early intervention

Abstract

Peer-assessment in education has a long history. Although the adoption of technological tools is not a recent phenomenon, many peer-assessment studies are conducted in manual environments. Automating peer-assessment tasks improves the efficiency of the practice and provides opportunities for taking advantage of large amounts of student-generated data, which will readily be available in electronic format. Data from three undergraduate-level courses, which utilised an electronic peer-assessment tool were explored in this study in order to investigate the relationship between participation in online peer-assessment tasks and successful course completion. It was found that students with little or no participation in optional peer-assessment activities had very low course completion rates as opposed to those with high participation. In light of this finding, it is argued that electronic peer-assessment can serve as a tool of early intervention. Further advantages of automated peer-assessment are discussed and foreseen extensions of this work are outlined.