Mitigating Generosity Bias in Peer Assessment: a Tool for Oral Class Presentations

In higher education courses, peer grading can keep students engaged during class presentations. Defining how students grade the work of their peers requires careful consideration. Two commonly used approaches exist. The first involves asking students to order the projects from best to worst. However, this approach imposes a high cognitive load on students, as ordering numerous projects is challenging. The second and most prevalent approach involves soliciting qualitative or numerical scores from students. However, a common challenge arises as students tend to be generous in the scores they assign their peers. Consequently, this leads to a situation where all projects receive similar, high grades. To address this challenge, we have developed a novel, interactive model. This model requires students to provide grades and to respond to a few pairwise comparison questions when necessary. The model was implemented as a mobile web application and tested in a university course, confirming its validity and efficiency.