A peer evaluation tool of online discussion board work

Collaborative group work is a commonly used format in distance education.   Among the challenges of online group work is poor participation of some students,   placing a disproportionate share of the group’s workload onto other group members.  This issue is frequently reported to faculty in course evaluations as a reason for student dissatisfaction with group work.     Peer/self evaluation is one strategy which can: 1) assist faculty in determining how each member of a group perceives his/her own contributions to the group process relative to the contributions of other group members 2) provide feedback to students who have not mastered or are not fully engaged in collaborative work  3) provide an incentive for students to contribute more fully to the shared workload in a group and 4) improve skills for future collaborative online work.    This presentation will describe a method for conducting peer and self evaluation of distance education group processes by using the “Assessment” (quiz) function in Blackboard,  and then processing the data in a spreadsheet program, such as Microsoft Excel.