​​Facilitating personal leadership skills through collaboration​

Project introduction and background information

Wageningen University & Research (WUR) envisions education that is student-centred, collaborative, and prepares graduates to thrive in diverse, international learning communities (Vision for education, 2025). Collaboration skills are fundamental to this vision: they enable students to work effectively in teams, exchange knowledge, and solve complex problems—competencies essential for their professional futures. Group projects are a primary vehicle for fostering these skills, yet explicit teaching, training, and assessment of collaboration are rarely embedded in Bachelor-level courses.

In the BSc Soil, Water, Atmosphere (BSW) programme, initial steps have been taken to strengthen collaboration skills through peer-evaluation methods. Peer-evaluation—where students assess each other’s contributions in group projects—has been shown to hold individuals accountable, reduce frustration, promote fairness, and improve both performance and attitudes toward teamwork (e.g., Conway and Kember, 1993, Pfaff and Huddleston, 2003, Zhang and Ohland, 2009, Watson et al., 2010, Dingel and Wei, 2014). Our experience confirms these benefits but also reveals challenges: students often feel unprepared to evaluate peers effectively, struggle to address group dynamics, and express dissatisfaction with group grading. Additionally, biases (e.g., related to gender or race) can undermine fairness and trust in evaluations.

These findings reflect a broader issue: while collaboration is central to student-centred education, peer-evaluation skills are seldom explicitly taught or scaffolded. As a result, students may miss opportunities to develop constructive feedback techniques, conflict resolution abilities, and shared responsibility in group settings. Addressing this gap is essential to ensure group projects enhance—not hinder—students’ learning experiences and professional readiness.

This project responds to these challenges by developing and implementing a comprehensive set of peer-evaluation tools, guidelines, and training materials tailored for BSc courses. By embedding explicit instruction in how to give and receive peer-feedback, we aim to improve collaboration skills, strengthen group dynamics, and support WUR’s goal of preparing students for effective participation in interdisciplinary and intercultural teams.

Objective and expected outcomes

The objective of this project is to improve students’ collaboration skills in group projects by developing, integrating, and explicitly teaching robust peer-evaluation methods within BSc courses. By equipping students with the tools and guidance to give and receive constructive feedback, the project aims to strengthen accountability, enhance group dynamics, and ensure fair recognition of individual contributions in collaborative learning environments.

Students engaged in the project are expected to:

• Improved peer-evaluation quality: Students provide more accurate, unbiased, and constructive evaluations of peers, leading to fairer grading and reduced group conflicts.
• Enhanced collaboration skills: Students demonstrate stronger teamwork, communication, and conflict-resolution abilities in interdisciplinary and intercultural group settings.
• Higher group project performance: Group project grades increase and align more closely with student-proposed grades, reflecting improved group dynamics and accountability.
• Recognition of individual contributions: Exceptional contributions within groups are more consistently identified by teachers and supervisors through peer-evaluation data.
• Creation of a peer-evaluation toolbox: A refined set of templates, rubrics, questionnaires, and educator guidelines supports ongoing use and adaptation across diverse courses and project types.
• Long-term employability benefits: Students leave the program better prepared for collaborative professional environments where teamwork and feedback are critical skills.

Recommendations

Future research should investigate how different peer-evaluation designs, feedback formats, and training approaches influence collaboration quality and learning outcomes across disciplines and cultural contexts. Comparative studies could explore which types of peer-evaluation tools (e.g., rubrics, narrative feedback, digital platforms) best reduce bias and improve accountability in diverse student groups. Longitudinal studies are also needed to assess whether improved peer-evaluation practices lead to sustained gains in collaboration skills, employability, and professional performance beyond university settings. Additionally, collaboration skill development could be complemented with self-assessment methods, and research should evaluate how integrating self-assessment with peer-evaluation amplifies the effectiveness of both approaches. Studies should also examine the scalability of peer-evaluation and self-assessment in large classes and online or hybrid learning environments, and explore faculty perspectives and barriers to implementation to embed these practices as standard, evidence-based elements of student-centred curricula.