Peer group projects: a novel way to boost quality in engineering education

This paper describes the use of peer assisted and peer organised teaching (learning) experiments as a part of co-curricular activities for undergraduate students of computer science and engineering. These exercises were conducted under the organisational sphere of a formal association of students, which included the peer assisted design, delivery and evaluation of short term part-time courses in computer programming such as HTML, C++, Java, as well as peer assisted compilation, evaluation and conduction of objective type aptitude, vocabulary and C language tests. This was expanded to include peer organised and designed software projects after a proper requirement analysis to automate a later part of the learning model and to support the in-house requirement of the institute to automate the library information system. This resulted in a tremendous rise in student output academically and a number of other skill sets, such as teamwork, management, analytical and presentation skills, and oral and presentation skills. In terms of academics, there is a rise in the performance of the group under the project in comparison with non-project groups. Future plans include that the projects incorporate performance metrics to measure the benefits to the group.