Being able to work well in a team is valued in industry and beyond. As such, many university educators strive to help their students to collaborate effectively. However, it is typically the case that more than ad-hoc experience is needed to master teamwork. Often, students need to become reflective practitioners who learn from their experiences and enact change. Self and peer evaluation can help evoke such reflection. However, the facilitating conditions for effective learning from peer evaluation during group projects in computing are not yet well-defined. This research is an initial step in identifying these conditions. In this study, students engaged in a long-term multidisciplinary software engineering project in which they produced a digital game. They completed regular exercises in which they reflected upon and wrote about their contributions to the project as well as those of their peers. Thematic analysis of 200 responses to an open-ended question about the purpose of these exercises illustrated the student perspective: giving and receiving feedback; prompting personal reflection and improvement; supporting supervision; aiding marking; informing project planning and management; coming to a shared understanding of the status and progress of the project; exploring and reshaping group dynamics; improving project outputs; providing a system to hold group members accountable; and giving a sense of safety to raise issues without repercussion. Giving consideration to these differing perceptions will help educators to address concerns about group projects and lay the foundations for a model of effective learning from peer evaluation during student collaborations.

Collaborative projects are commonplace in computing education. They typically enable students to gain experience building software in teams, equipping them with the teamwork skills they need to be competitive in the labour market. However, students often need encouragement to reflect upon and synthesise their experience to attain the most learning. Peer evaluation offers one such approach, but the conditions which facilitate effective peer evaluation have not yet been established. This paper seeks to provide insight into student experiences with peer evaluation. It builds upon prior qualitative work, analysing quantitative data collected through a questionnaire taken by undergraduate students on a collaborate digital game development module. An exploratory factor analysis identifies seven dimensions of variance in the student experience: perceived impact; arbitrary influence; inconsistency; team cohesiveness; assessment pressure; ease and professionalism. Correlation analysis suggests some factors such as arbitrary influence, team cohesion, assessment pressure, and professionalism are associated with attained learning, whilst factors such as inconsistency and onerousness are not. This informs the development of a conceptual framework, suggesting focuses which facilitate effective peer evaluation. Expanding this conceptual framework and validating it across different demographics, contexts, and project types are suggested as avenues for further investigation. CCS CONCEPTS• Social and professional topics → Student assessment; • Applied computing → Collaborative learning; • Software and its engineering → Programming teams.