Student Perspectives on the Purpose of Peer Evaluation During Group Game Development Projects

Being able to work well in a team is valued in industry and beyond. As such, many university educators strive to help their students to collaborate effectively. However, it is typically the case that more than ad-hoc experience is needed to master teamwork. Often, students need to become reflective practitioners who learn from their experiences and enact change. Self and peer evaluation can help evoke such reflection. However, the facilitating conditions for effective learning from peer evaluation during group projects in computing are not yet well-defined. This research is an initial step in identifying these conditions. In this study, students engaged in a long-term multidisciplinary software engineering project in which they produced a digital game. They completed regular exercises in which they reflected upon and wrote about their contributions to the project as well as those of their peers. Thematic analysis of 200 responses to an open-ended question about the purpose of these exercises illustrated student perspectives: giving and receiving feedback; prompting personal reflection and improvement; supporting supervision; aiding marking; informing project planning and management; exploring and reshaping group dynamics; improving project outputs; providing a system to hold group members accountable; and giving a sense of safety to raise issues without repercussion. Giving consideration to these differing perceptions will help educators to address student concerns about group projects, notably standardisation, workload efficiency, and fairness, and will lay the foundations for a model of peer evaluation which improves teamwork.