Effectiveness and equity of peer assessment of individual contributions to group assignment

In recent years, various forms of group work have been introduced in university courses across a wide variety of subject domains, including Construction Management courses. Although the use of group work in higher education has sound pedagogical reasons and advantages, group work has its own drawbacks. Therefore, the acceptance of group work by students and the success of group work critically depend on a fair and credible assessment of the group process. In this paper, the implementation of different approaches to peer assessment of individuals' contributions to group projects in a core unit in an undergraduate Construction Management course in an Australian university is reported. The effectiveness and equity of the adopted peer assessment approaches are to be evaluated by students. It is to be explored that whether the fairness of a peer assessment approach necessarily depends on its complexity. The prospective findings are expected to help instructors adopt effective peer assessment approaches that measure individual members' contribution and develop a structured methodology to progressively encourage group members to work cohesively in teams.