Exploring summative peer assessment during a hybrid undergraduate supply chain course using Moodle

Abstract

The main hypothesis of this recent study was that student peer assessing could produce a fair grade in a hybrid undergraduate supply chain course. A key challenge was there were three long written assignments weighted at 90% of the course spread throughout 15 weeks (the final exam in week 16 was weighted at 10%). The secondary goal was to explore if Moodle could facilitate the online assessment of the three project management plans (PPs). A PP was approximately 25 single-spaced pages, based on a unique initiative for each of the 45 students, and it was evaluated against nine Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) standards as well as other course learning objectives. The PMBOK lectures were classroom-based, data collection was field- based for authentic experiential learning while the LMS was essential for material sharing and assignment management. Interrater reliability, correlation and pair-wise t-test estimates supported the hypotheses. Peer assessments were found to be reliable between students and consistent with the professor's evaluations. Moodle's workshop module was effective but there were two minor shortcomings: (1) reliabilities must be estimated manually, and (2) there was only one rudimentary algorithm in Moodle to calculate the student rater grade for peer assessment quality.