The Design and Development of an Online Database-Driven Peer Assessment Tool Using Division Rule Theory

Peer assessment has been adopted as a means of fair and equitable measurement of individual contributions to group work (Cheng and Warren, 2000; Conway and Kember, 1993; Gatfield, 1999; Goldfinch and Raeside, 1990; Lejk and Wyvill, 2001; Lejk, Wyvill, and Farrow, 1996) and it usually requires a certain mechanism or formula to quantify peer assessment criteria. The problem, however, is that it leads to circumstances where a student can be strategic and be easily able to obtain a higher score by simply giving lower scores to other members within a group. The need is to find a new mechanism and the purpose of this study is to develop an Online Database-Driven Peer Assessment Tool (ODDPAT) using the Division Rule mechanism as its core computational algorithm. This developmental study used modified Collaborative Create-Adapt-Generalize (CAG) model (Hicks, Potter, Snider, and Holmes, 2004) as its design and developmental framework. The process of design, development, and evaluation of the entire project was documented. Three experts were interviewed and detailed analysis of data was discussed. Finally, recommendations were made for its implementation and future research.