Peer Assessment of Student Teamwork: Case Studies involving Multicultural Project-based Learning

This study compares peer assessment data on team performance from four different Project Based Learning (PjBL) experiences. Teams consisting of Chinese and Canadian undergraduate students, mostly from engineering programs, were studied. In all cases examined students were found to assess themselves higher than their peers. In general, the Chinese students were found to assess the Canadian students positively, while the Canadian students were found to assess the Chinese students negatively. This cultural difference was found to increase as project difficulty decreased. Outlier analysis indicated that Canadian males were most likely to give strong negative feedback, while Chinese females were the least likely to give this type of feedback. Chinese males were found most likely to give strong positive feedback, while Canadian females were the least likely to give this type of feedback.

Proceedings of the 9th International CDIO Conference, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Cambridge, Massachusetts, June 9 – 13, 2013.