The Impact of Rubric-Guided Peer Review and Self-Assessment in an Engineering Math University Course

We investigated the use of a rubric-guided peer-review activity in two first-year engineering calculus groups (N = 38). The intervention involved three phases: (1) students completed a short integration worksheet and predicted their own score, (2) they engaged in peer marking both before and after an instructor-led solution walk-through with explicit criteria, and (3) they later took a midterm test and completed a post-activity questionnaire. To examine ability-level effects, we applied a dual-perspective quartile approach that classified both reviewers and reviewees (targets) by their instructor-assigned marks. Results showed that peer-grading error decreased by 3–5 points across all reviewer–target combinations, with the largest reduction observed when lower-achieving students graded the work of similarly low-achieving peers. Mid-achieving students also improved the calibration, cutting self-assessment error by half. Performance gains carried over to subsequent assessments: average midterm scores increased significantly for the bottom two quartiles. Survey responses (≥3.4/5) indicated that 60–70% of students found the activity beneficial for their understanding and exam preparation. Overall, the study demonstrates that rubric-guided peer review and assessment, when analyzed through a novel dual-lens quartile framework, can sharpen feedback accuracy, improve self-evaluation and enhance exam performance for mid- and lower-performing students while offering equity-oriented implications for assessment design.