Hybrid and Online Peer Group Grading: Adding Assessment Efficiency While Maintaining Perceived Fairness

Abstract

The rate of transition to online instruction in higher education was accelerated by the new reality of the global pandemic, COVID-19. As a result, faculty must adapt by being more efficient to manage more students with less resources and even less personal contact for the foreseeable future. Efficiency can be gained by using group assignments and peer group grading. Peer group grading reduces assessment time although students may be concerned about having their work graded fairly by other students. The peer group grading process and grades are analyzed against the instructor grades over a two-year period. Results demonstrate no significant difference in peer group grades and instructor grades for pre-COVID-19 hybrid and post-COVID-19 online courses. Student survey results also show that students perceive peer group grading as fair in both course formats. Therefore, instructors can feel confident about using peer group grading as a fair and time saving assessment tool.

Using cross-course peer grading with content expertise, anonymity, and perceived justice

“…Prior research has established the efficacy of peer group grading among students in the same course (Vander Schee & Birrittella, 2021). However, having students in an advanced course assess the work of novice students in a different course merits further investigation.…”

“…Senior marketing capstone students self-selected into teams of two as recommended by Vander Schee and Birrittella (2021) who note that using smaller teams minimizes social loafing while maintaining accountability. As recommended by Aurand and Wakefield (2006), they were then provided with an overview of the marketing mix analysis assigned to the novice student teams, including written instructions, verbal overview, grading rubric, and scoring card that would be used to assess their assigned submission (see the Appendix).…”

Hybrid data analytic technique for grading fairness

“…Chowdhury (2020) ensured fairness in marking students' writing tasks by defining a rubric and communicating it among a team of markers as well as students. Schee and Birrittella (2021) engaged peer group grading based on a rubric provided by instructors to reduce assessment times and improve fairness for both hybrid and online learning environments. Nevertheless, all of these related works did neither specifically nor quantitatively evaluate the fairness of norm-referenced grading.…”

Navigating the New Normal: An S-O-R Perspective on Student Experiences of Environmental, Psychological, and Behavioral Changes During the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…However, as it became increasingly clear that nearly 80% of the largest colleges and universities would continue with some form of remote instruction for the 2020-2021 academic year (N. , several scholars started urging for research on how marketing education was going to be impacted by the conditions of this new normal (Mitchell et al, 2020;Wooldridge et al, 2021). In response to such calls for research, there has been a flurry of work attempting to gauge the efficacy of different pedagogical interventions such as online discussion boards, messaging apps, podcasts, online peer grading, and video-conference platforms (Ackerman & Gross, 2021;Drehmer & Gala, 2021;McCarthy et al, 2021;Mitchell et al, 2021;Sutton-Brady 2021;Vander Schee & Birrittella, 2021). Such research attempts, coupled with some others (e.g., Kordrostami & Seitz, 2021;Rayburn et al, 2020;Rippé et al, 2021;Swanson et al, 2021), have yielded invaluable insights on improving engagement, perceived control, course material retention, perceived learning, and satisfaction for students, thereby increasing their likelihood of having a positive educational experience despite the pandemic.…”