One thing I have not seen discussed in this great trail on peer evaluation is undergrad vs. grad.  In my experience, the overwhelming majority of those who participate in this list are teaching to grad students who are in professional schools.  That's a different student from teaching undergrads, particularly those in first/second year required courses.  Yet, the the latter students too need to learn to work in teams.  In my experience they are most likely to be critical of slackers.  So what do I do for Peer Evaluation?

I ask my students to imagine they are their team's supervisor doing an annual evaluation.  They are asked to write down high quality commentary on both what each team member's positive contributions to the team and to the team's work have been as well as areas needing improvement.  Students are then asked to grade each team member.  I evaluate the quality of their evaluations for 75% of the peer evaluation grade and average the grades each student receives from his/her peers for 25% of their peer evaluation grade.  Yes, it's quite a bit of work and I have yet to try iPeer to help automate it (though I do collect the data via an on-line survey).  However, it is both more realistic (everyone has to be evaluated by our superiors and we cannot pretend all evaluations will be equal) and I collect great data for the inevitable requests for student recommendations later on.

Sarah J. Mahler
Associate Professor
Global & Sociocultural Studies
Florida International University
Miami, Florida  33199  USA