Are student peer assessments reliable? Analysis of a classroom-based management course

The purpose of this study was to investigate if undergraduate students could assess peer work in a school of business and economics course which involved several long essay-type reports. A key challenge was the volume of grading since there were three written assignments spread throughout the course. The secondary goal was to explore if the learning management system (LMS) could facilitate the peer assessment process and if it could calculate a fair grade representing the quality of peer assessment work. The techniques applied to examine the hypotheses were interrater reliability, correlation, and pair-wise t-test estimates. The results supported the hypotheses that students reliably assessed their peers; these scores were consistent with the professor, and with the LMS.