Examining Student Satisfaction with Group Projects and Peer Assessment

The efficiency and effectiveness of learning outcomes in groupwork and in peer assessment is well attested in the higher education literature. However, there is little evidence that any quantitative measures of student satisfaction have been undertaken with the group process and peer assessment. In this paper a peer assessment method is explained and a study detailed which was undertaken on a cohort of 261 students to measure student satisfaction of the assessment process. It was found that there were high levels of student satisfaction with groupwork and in the adopted assessment method. Further analysis revealed that there were no effects on the levels of satisfaction of students with the independent variables gender and age. Yet, there was a fairly significant difference in the levels of satisfaction of students having work experience favouring those without. Finally, there was found to be a substantial difference in the levels of satisfaction between Australian and international students with international students expressing higher values. It is recommended that this study be extended to other subjects and disciplines.