Problem: Due to the stress that professors experience in order to grade exam papers and provide feedback in a short and timely manner, online peer assessments have become an appealing suggestion for professors. This online peer assessment would allow students to assess one another while also reducing teachers' workload. However, there is a lot of skepticism in the validity of students assessing one another.

Context: The experience to test the validity of online peer assessment required 242 students, enrolled in three different courses. Three exams were organized for the three courses - two computer architecture courses and a general electrical engineering course. Though all exams addressed difficult test questions, all the exams were marked out of 20 points. Points ranged as low as 0.5 points and as high as 3 points.

Findings: The study found that there was a good agreement between the teacher's assessments and the peers' assessments. The study also shows that its possible to obtain a good correlation between peer and teacher marks. However, the results given are limited to exams that mainly contain questions about the specific topic addressed in each exam. The results suggest that it's okay to trust peer assessment as long as it applies to exams that about specific topics such as a science field with calculations, mathematical reasoning, short algorithms and drafting of short texts.

Recommendations: The study suggests that peer assessment is good with an exam paper is marked by at least four peers. In addition, more validity can be given to the grading of the exam with its peer assessed and self-assessed.

A few precautionary steps to take when doing online peer assessments is the following:

1. Students are educated on how to mark papers
2. All questions in the test are understandable. (i.e., provide examples to elaborate questions)is to ensure that everyone is clear as to how to mark exam papers)

In conclusion, having several peers grade one exam will help the teacher average out the deserved score of the exam. This strategy will decrease the workload of the teacher and encourage critical thinking among students. If I were a teacher and had a lot on my plate, I would result to using this online peer assessment. In addition, I would probably have a teacher's assistant to review all of the peer assessments.