SPARK, a confidential web–based template for self and peer assessment of student teamwork: benefits of evaluating across different subjects

Students often enjoy learning in teams and developing teamwork skills, but criticise team assessment as unfair if there is equal reward for unequal contributions. This paper describes the design, implementation and evaluation in four subjects of the Self and Peer Assessment Resource Kit (SPARK), a web–based template which aims to improve learning from team assessment tasks and make the assessment fairer for students. Students benefit because the web–based template improves confidentiality and the potential for accurate assessment of relative contributions. Academics benefit through the potential for improving student learning from teamwork tasks, and saving time by automating the process of calculating self and peer adjustments of assessment grades, especially attractive for large enrolments. Benefits accrue to the institution and wider academic community because the template suits a range of group assessment situations. Based on experiences gained over five years of developing, evaluating and implementing SPARK, this paper aims to illustrate the potential benefits of the template to potential users and more critically, to use what was learned from implementing the template across a range of subjects to alert others to key issues for evaluating and disseminating educational technology innovations.