Online peer assessment: An exploratory case study in a higher education civil engineering course

Peer-assessed online collaborative writing is of growing importance in recent research on higher education. Based on the analysis of quantitative and qualitative collected data, this paper presents the results of an exploratory case study in a graduate civil engineering course at the University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Portugal. After an overall presentation of the activity, it examines students´ attitudes towards online peer assessment and identifies which factors are related to students´ use and appreciation of feedback. In addition, an analysis of the type of feedback is presented in an attempt to evaluate students´ written communication skills. The results of this exploratory investigation provide indications on how to improve the design and implementation of future peer assessment tasks and raise questions on the involvement of peer/teacher grading in the use of feedback.