A comparative analysis of the consistency and difference among online self-, peer-, external- and instructor-assessments: The competitive effect

In the last few years, self- and peer-assessment have been increasingly employed not only as an evaluation method, but also as a learning procedure. The consistency and difference between self- and peer-assessments as compared to instructor-assessments have been previously studied, and a friendship bias was discovered. In this study, we introduce external-assessment (products are assessed by students from a different university that are enrolled in a similar course), and compare self-, peer-, external- and instructor-assessments. The experience was conducted at two different universities separated by a significant distance, during two consecutive years, including a total of 97 students. At both universities, students developed websites and online tools were employed to organise the different types of assessments. The obtained results indicate that there is a high-level of consistency across the different kinds of assessments. Moreover, a competitive effect was discovered: students tended to award higher grades to students from their same university while they were harsher with the products from a distant university. From the learning perspective, and according to the students' final grade, the assessment experience correlated with learning gains.