A major part of my Master’s degree requirements was my research paper. If you heard me lament over the past year or so about my “thesis”, I was referring to this research paper.
Anyhow, after lots of hard work, my research paper was finally signed off by my supervisor, Dr. Greg Wilson, and second reader Dr. Yuri Takhteyev. A huge thanks to both of them!
Here’s the abstract, followed by a download link for the PDF. Enjoy!
Abstract
Peer code review is commonly used in the software development industry to identify and fix problems during the development process. An additional benefit is that it seems to help spread knowledge and expertise around the team conducting the review. So is it possible to leverage peer code review as a learning tool? Our experiment results show that peer code review seems to cause a performance boost in students. They also show that the average total peer mark generated by students seems to be similar to the total mark that a graduate-level teaching assistant might give. We found that students agree that peer code review teaches them something – however, we also found they do not enjoy grading their peers’ work. We are encouraged by these results, and feel that they are a strong motive for further research in this area.