Peer Evaluation in Team-Based Learning

Peer evaluation is an essential component of classic team-based learning (TBL), yet many health science educators have encountered difficulties when attempting to incorporate a peer evaluation program into their TBL curriculum. This chapter discusses the rationale behind peer evaluation in TBL, several methods that have been used to evaluate peers in health science education, the difficulties faculty have encountered when attempting to implement peer evaluation programs, and potential solutions that can be used to overcome these difficulties. Peer evaluation is certainly not unique to TBL. In the Michaelsen method, students are expected to assign teammates a score based upon the extent to which they believe their teammates contributed to the overall team performance. In the Fink method, learners are given 100 points and prompted to divide them among their teammates based on the degree to which each teammate contributed to the group work.