• Journal of Engineering Education Research
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.63-70
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• 2024

The capstone design classes in the College of Engineering are often team project-oriented, and teamwork skills are reported to positively impact problem-solving abilities. While team project courses have various advantages, they also come with challenges such as social loafing and issues related to free riders, which consistently hinder the positive effects of team project courses. To prevent these issues, there is a need to provide a clear evaluation-reward system for team members' contributions. In this study, we examined the reliability of peer evaluation scores for team members' contributions and reviewed methods to incorporate them into team project grades. The review results indicated that peer evaluation scores are deemed to have considerable reliability from a qualitative perspective. However, due to the relatively small team size in team project courses (3 to 6 members per team), using the arithmetic mean of peer evaluation scores is statistically challenging. As a complementary approach, this study proposes limiting the reflection ratio of peer evaluation scores and applying a more macroscopic processing method, not the arithmetic mean, to incorporate peer evaluation scores for team contributions into grades.