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In collaboration with Stijn Slootmans (Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Antwerp) and Walter Roosels (E-campus, University of Antwerp)

Would you like to engage students more actively in group assignments while strengthening their collaborative skills? If so, peer assessment may be a valuable assessment approach to consider. Moreover, digital tools can support its implementation efficiently. One such tool is Buddycheck, which can be easily integrated into your institution’s virtual learning environment and helps structure and facilitate peer assessment within group work.

In this teaching tip, you will discover what peer assessment through Buddycheck can offer both you and your students. We begin with a brief introduction to peer assessment: what it is, what can be assessed, when it can be used, and which key considerations contribute to effective implementation.

1. What is peer assessment?

Peer assessment refers to the process whereby students judge and make decisions about the work of their peers against particular criteria (Adachi et al., 2018). These judgements may contribute to the final grade or be used primarily to support learning and development.

According to Fleckney et al. (2025), peer assessment can enhance student learning outcomes, foster interpersonal skills, strengthen learner autonomy and motivation, and improve academic performance across different levels of higher education, disciplinary contexts, and assessment formats.

Peer assessment can also offer considerable benefits for lecturers. From an efficiency perspective, it can help reduce aspects of the marking workload, creating more opportunities for targeted guidance and enabling students to receive feedback more quickly. In addition, peer assessment provides valuable insights into students’ learning processes: how they interpret assessment criteria, how group dynamics evolve, and how individual contributions are distributed within a team.

The following sections explore how peer assessment can be implemented purposefully within your module or course.

2. What do you want to assess?

The first step is to determine the purpose of the peer assessment. Do you want students to reflect on the product, the process, or both? This decision will shape what students assess and how the peer assessment is designed (Sluijsmans, 2003).

When the focus is on the product, students evaluate the quality of an academic output—such as a paper, presentation, or design project—against clearly defined criteria. The emphasis is on whether the product meets the expected standards. Criteria may include, for example, argumentation, analysis, structure, and evidential support. This form of peer assessment primarily targets cognitive learning outcomes.

Examples

• Students assess one another’s essays on argumentation, use of sources, and academic writing style.
• Students assess each other’s designs or prototypes in terms of functionality, innovation, and technical accuracy.
• Students provide feedback on research reports.
• Students assess group presentations with respect to content, clarity, and visual support.
  

When the focus shifts to the process, attention is directed towards how the work is accomplished. Two dimensions can be distinguished: the task process (planning, organisation, and methods used) and the group process (collaboration, engagement, and the contribution of individual group members). This form of peer assessment particularly supports the development of collaborative and reflective skills and can be implemented effectively using tools such as Buddycheck.

Examples

• Students assess how their team organised the work (e.g. frequency of meetings, division of tasks).
• Group members assess one another individually on preparation for meetings, adherence to agreements and deadlines, quality of contributions, initiative-taking, and related behaviours through a confidential scoring form.
• Students assess each other’s participation and provision of constructive feedback during group activities.
  

Once you have a clear understanding of what you wish to assess, you can determine when and for what purpose peer assessment will be integrated into the learning process.

3. When should peer assessment be used?

The timing of peer assessment depends largely on its intended purpose.

When peer assessment is used to assess performance, it takes on a summative function. Students assess one another using predefined criteria, and the resulting evaluations contribute partially or fully to the final grade. In group projects, peer assessment can be used to differentiate a shared group mark based on individual contributions. This helps address issues of free-riding and makes individual effort more visible.

When peer assessment is intended to support learning, it serves a formative function. Students provide each other with feedback based on clear criteria, without the outcomes contributing to the final grade. This helps students develop an understanding of quality standards and gives them opportunities to improve their work before final submission.

In practice, a combination of both approaches is often most effective (Sluijsmans, 2003). Students can first engage in formative peer assessment activities, using them as opportunities to practise evaluation and feedback skills. Peer assessment can then be reintroduced later as part of the summative assessment process. Such a phased approach helps students develop sound judgement skills and increases both the reliability of peer assessment and student acceptance of the process (see also ECHO-tip, 2013; ECHO-tip, 2017).

Once you have determined what will be assessed (product and/or process), why it will be assessed (formatively and/or summatively), and which criteria will be used, Buddycheck can support the practical implementation of your assessment design.

4. What can Buddycheck do?

Where peer assessment may previously have involved substantial manual administration and calculation, digital tools can significantly reduce the associated workload. Buddycheck helps lecturers organise peer assessment in group work efficiently. The tool integrates with most virtual learning environments, including Blackboard and Canvas, depending on the institution’s platform.

Buddycheck maps group processes using the research-based (Loughry et al., 2007), short for Comprehensive Assessment of Team Member Effectiveness. This framework identifies five dimensions of effective teamwork and provides the basis for analysing individual contributions within groups:

1. Contributing to the team’s work: completing tasks, participating in discussions, and supporting others.
2. Interacting with team members: listening to others, connecting group members, encouraging participation, and being receptive to feedback.
3. Keeping the team on track: monitoring progress, addressing challenges, and providing constructive feedback.
4. Expecting quality: motivating others, investing effort and time, and demonstrating confidence in the team’s capabilities.
5. Having relevant knowledge, skills, and abilities: demonstrating and developing expertise and being able to take on different roles within the group.
   

4.1 Configuring questions

Buddycheck includes an extensive question bank based on these five dimensions. These questions can be adapted to align with your learning outcomes and assessment criteria. You may add, modify, delete, or reuse questions from previous peer assessment activities.

Different question types can also be created, depending on what you wish to assess:

• Peer questions: each student assesses every group member, including themselves, using a Likert scale.
• Group questions: each student evaluates the group as a whole.
• Open-ended questions: students provide written responses regarding the collaboration process or project.
• Peer messages: individual messages directed to specific team members.

_{Example of a peer question: "To what extent does this student actively contribute to developing a clear understanding of the product to be designed?"}

​The combination of quantitative ratings and qualitative feedback can offer a richer and more nuanced picture of group functioning.

4.2 Results and follow​-up

Once the peer assessment has been completed, Buddycheck automatically processes the results and makes them available for further evaluation and guidance.

More specifically, the tool calculates a correction factor that translates a group mark into individual marks based on each student’s relative contribution to the group. This factor is calculated by dividing a student’s average score by the overall average score of all group members. More detailed information about the calculation can be found in the (Presilli, 2021).

Students receive a personalised report containing their scores and feedback in relation to the group average.

Lecturers have access to both summary reports and raw data for further analysis. Signals such as substantial score discrepancies or unusual self-assessments are automatically detected and flagged, enabling timely intervention where potential issues arise within groups.

In other words, Buddycheck not only removes much of the administrative burden associated with peer assessment but also provides actionable insights that can support monitoring, discussion, and improvement of group processes.

5. Good practice: Group project in Nursing and Midwifery

Within the bridging programme of the Master's programme in Nursing and Midwifery at the University of Antwerp, and specifically within the 'Management and Innovation' learning trajectory, students work throughout an entire academic year on a complex professional practice challenge.

The assignment is based on a real-world problem from professional practice and requires students to analyse the issue, gather scientific and practice-based evidence, develop possible solutions, and translate these into a well-founded project outcome and implementation plan. The groups operate largely autonomously: students divide responsibilities, take on meeting roles, monitor progress, and share responsibility for the quality of the final product.

Peer assessment is conducted through Buddycheck at the end of both Semester 1 and Semester 2, with participation compulsory for all students. During each semester, a dedicated feedback session is organised in which students discuss their results in a formative context. Reflection focuses on their contribution to both the project outcome and the group process.

For the summative assessment, the Buddycheck correction factor is applied at the end of the project. This allows differences in individual contribution to be reflected in differentiated individual grades derived from the group mark, thereby recognising individual effort more fairly.

In addition, peer assessment results, alongside data from other personal development instruments, form the basis for an individual reflective paper on students’ development as emerging academics. In this paper, students analyse their results, critically reflect on their performance, and formulate targeted developmental goals. The paper is assessed summatively, taking into account both students’ capacity for self-regulation and reflection on their own learning processes, as well as their academic writing skills.

Drawing on this example, we conclude with several recommendations for lecturers wishing to implement peer assessment through Buddycheck.

6. Practical recommendations for using Buddycheck

Regardless of the scale or structure of your group assignment, the following recommendations can support the effective use of peer assessment in your teaching practice.

In summary, begin with your learning outcomes and assessment criteria, and determine how peer assessment can contribute to your module or group assignment. Buddycheck can then serve as an effective instrument to facilitate this assessment design. By clarifying the pedagogical choices before implementing the technology, you increase the likelihood of using the tool successfully and meaningfully.

We hope this teaching tip has provided practical guidance and inspiration for integrating peer assessment into your educational practice and that you feel confident about getting started with Buddycheck. Good luck!

​Lees deze tip in het Nederlands​