A Case of Implementation of an iPeer Software Tool to Assess and Develop Engineering Students Teamwork Capabilities in a Large Class Environment

Due to the growing administrative challenges and addressing the need for creating an efficient large class learning environment, a peer review approach is introduced as a part of the Engineering Management module's teamwork assessment. The module is compulsory to all engineering disciplines and has an annual class size of ±1000 students in the University of Pretoria. As a result, the workload of academic staff has concurrently become unfeasible, especially concerning the student assessment and feedback. Furthermore, the industry feedback has indicated that the current system is not successfully producing the employability capabilities needed in the real world in terms of teamwork. This competency gap between students' actual teamwork skills and the skills required by the industry further sparked the need to revisit the teaching, learning and assessment practices of teamwork. Hence the technology-assisted peer review provided a solution to maintain the workload and the prospective to work smarter. This paper aspires to advance a better understanding regards the utilisation of peer review and its educational value in a large class size environment as the existing literature currently focus on small class size applications. This is an interactive mix methods study with a multiphase concurrent interdependent design. The emphasis is in the considerations of practical reality as the instructors in the high education institutions under the pressure of growing class sizes are in constant need of useful tools and new practical knowledge to better operate in their environment. The convenience sample includes 826 students forming 166 teams. After the completion, it became apparent that the peer review has a positive impact on students' self-awareness and that it can be used for assessment for a teamwork evaluation with certain limitations. This paper argues that the peer review, however, does not provide a `quick fix' automatically improving students' teamwork capabilities but rather only assists in highlighting the problem areas when used in isolation. To enable actual cognitive learning and skills development, a more systematic approach involving curriculum development is required where teamwork skills are developed gradually through different modules from first to last year.