Collaborative learning tasks have been hampered by problems of unequal participation such as the presence of a free rider or dominance by a member of a group. Researchers in the collaborative learning domain respond to these problems with approaches designed to establish personal accountability for each student and relations of positive interdependence between students. These two notions have been borrowed and integrated with the present approach, which is designed for use in both traditional and online peer assessment. The key assumption is that introducing a greater degree of positive interdependence and personal accountability into the assessment process may reduce or eliminate free riding, while with students performing their ratings individually, dominance is unlikely to be an issue.
IntroductionPeer assessment refers to any arrangement in which learners consider the amount, level, value, worth, quality or success of the learning outcomes of their peers (Topping, 1998). A number of studies have found generally positive results for peer assessment, including studies showing moderate to high correlations between peer and teacher assessments (Falchikov
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