Peer Evaluation and Academic Performance in Bachelor of Science Electrical Engineering

Abstract

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of the peer evaluation in a first-year Bachelor of Science (BSc) Electrical Engineering project involving 17 groups of 6-9 students. Students evaluated each other and themselves on five peer evaluation dimensions, namely job performance, attitude, leadership/initiative, communication, and teamwork, using a 1-5 scale (5 being the highest). The academic performance metrics (first-year BSc overall grade point average (GPA) and project final grade) were collected for our analysis. A dedicated measure, the “Factor” (a student's average peer rating divided by the overall group average), was used to measure the peer evaluation results. Overall, though the correlation between peer evaluations and academic performance was low (r = 0.04), we found a strong correlation (r = 0.71) among students with lower peer evaluation scores. In general, in groups, self-assessments and peer evaluations were highly correlated (r = 0.82). We performed further statistical analyses such as multiple linear regression, clustering, mediation analysis and random forest regression in this study. While peer evaluations capture important aspects of teamwork and interpersonal skills, for most of the students, they seem likely more reflective of project-related competencies than necessarily only the overall GPA. Our findings suggest that the insights from BuddyCheck data can serve as an early indicator for targeted future interventions, enhancing collaborative learning outcomes in our projects. Note that, to further preserve anonymity, neither the project name nor the academic year/cohort is disclosed in this paper.