A supervised method for unbiased peer-to-peer evaluation. An experience with engineering students

Continuous evaluation is an assessment method which has some appealing advantages but also implies an increase of the teacher’s efforts and it may be unfeasible if the class is large. Of course, new technologies may be used to implement automatized evaluations, but it is usually quite difficult to c...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Francisco J. Simois
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Universitat Politècnica de València 2015-09-01
Series:Multidisciplinary Journal for Education, Social and Technological Sciences
Subjects:
Online Access:http://polipapers.upv.es/index.php/MUSE/article/view/3738
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1850055918941634560
author Francisco J. Simois
author_facet Francisco J. Simois
author_sort Francisco J. Simois
collection DOAJ
description Continuous evaluation is an assessment method which has some appealing advantages but also implies an increase of the teacher’s efforts and it may be unfeasible if the class is large. Of course, new technologies may be used to implement automatized evaluations, but it is usually quite difficult to carry them out when a complex task like an engineering problem is to be judged. An interesting alternative is a peer-to-peer evaluation, that is, the students themselves review their works. Nevertheless, one drawback is that it is likely that the grades are overrated. Although this is a well-known problem, not much effort is usually put into solving it. In this work we propose a novel method to limit this inconvenience, which is that the teacher randomly supervises a fraction of the students tasks. In this paper we present the results of such an experience carried out in a Signal Processing course within a Robotics Engineering degree. More precisely, four different sets of problems were solved by the teacher in class. At the same time, they were peer-to-peer reviewed by the students, following the indications given by the professor. Later, when the random supervision is performed, a penalty is applied if a major flaw in a student’s evaluation is detected. Thanks to this strategy, the scores tended to be more and more accurate according to the teacher’s criteria. Finally, the results of a survey anonymously fulfilled by the students to assess this experience are also presented.
format Article
id doaj-art-addfb78bcdb148dd8587fb5970eade21
institution DOAJ
issn 2341-2593
language English
publishDate 2015-09-01
publisher Universitat Politècnica de València
record_format Article
series Multidisciplinary Journal for Education, Social and Technological Sciences
spelling doaj-art-addfb78bcdb148dd8587fb5970eade212025-08-20T02:51:50ZengUniversitat Politècnica de ValènciaMultidisciplinary Journal for Education, Social and Technological Sciences2341-25932015-09-0122657810.4995/muse.2015.37383077A supervised method for unbiased peer-to-peer evaluation. An experience with engineering studentsFrancisco J. Simois0University of SevillaContinuous evaluation is an assessment method which has some appealing advantages but also implies an increase of the teacher’s efforts and it may be unfeasible if the class is large. Of course, new technologies may be used to implement automatized evaluations, but it is usually quite difficult to carry them out when a complex task like an engineering problem is to be judged. An interesting alternative is a peer-to-peer evaluation, that is, the students themselves review their works. Nevertheless, one drawback is that it is likely that the grades are overrated. Although this is a well-known problem, not much effort is usually put into solving it. In this work we propose a novel method to limit this inconvenience, which is that the teacher randomly supervises a fraction of the students tasks. In this paper we present the results of such an experience carried out in a Signal Processing course within a Robotics Engineering degree. More precisely, four different sets of problems were solved by the teacher in class. At the same time, they were peer-to-peer reviewed by the students, following the indications given by the professor. Later, when the random supervision is performed, a penalty is applied if a major flaw in a student’s evaluation is detected. Thanks to this strategy, the scores tended to be more and more accurate according to the teacher’s criteria. Finally, the results of a survey anonymously fulfilled by the students to assess this experience are also presented.http://polipapers.upv.es/index.php/MUSE/article/view/3738Peer-to-peer evaluationSupervised assessmentEngineering courseHigher education
spellingShingle Francisco J. Simois
A supervised method for unbiased peer-to-peer evaluation. An experience with engineering students
Multidisciplinary Journal for Education, Social and Technological Sciences
Peer-to-peer evaluation
Supervised assessment
Engineering course
Higher education
title A supervised method for unbiased peer-to-peer evaluation. An experience with engineering students
title_full A supervised method for unbiased peer-to-peer evaluation. An experience with engineering students
title_fullStr A supervised method for unbiased peer-to-peer evaluation. An experience with engineering students
title_full_unstemmed A supervised method for unbiased peer-to-peer evaluation. An experience with engineering students
title_short A supervised method for unbiased peer-to-peer evaluation. An experience with engineering students
title_sort supervised method for unbiased peer to peer evaluation an experience with engineering students
topic Peer-to-peer evaluation
Supervised assessment
Engineering course
Higher education
url http://polipapers.upv.es/index.php/MUSE/article/view/3738
work_keys_str_mv AT franciscojsimois asupervisedmethodforunbiasedpeertopeerevaluationanexperiencewithengineeringstudents
AT franciscojsimois supervisedmethodforunbiasedpeertopeerevaluationanexperiencewithengineeringstudents