Evaluating a Budget-Based Approach to Peer Assessment for Measuring Collaboration Among Learners on Interprofessional Teams

Assessing interprofessional skills poses challenges for health professions educators. While competency frameworks define the skills graduating students should possess, they do not provide guidance for assessment. This brief report explores validity evidence for use of peer assessment to assess learners and provide feedback for improvement. The context was an online learning experience for 477 fourth-year students from medicine, nursing, and pharmacy who worked together on small interprofessional teams to care for a virtual geriatric patient. At the end of each case unit, students were given a budget of points to allocate among teammates to assess their communication and interprofessional collaboration. Ratings were averaged to provide learners with feedback about their performance. Scores were normally distributed, did not demonstrate a leniency effect, were moderately correlated with ratings that preceptors assigned to students, and had smaller correlations with knowledge scores and other case activity m...