Do you do group #assessments for your #highered courses? How do you deal with "free-riders" who don't engage with the rest of the group?
At the moment I'm thinking of
- having students include a statement of who has done what in their final product
- having a couple of sessions (beginning of term and mid-term) where each group presents a plan first and a short progress report later, which clearly states student contributions
- stress to the students that part of the idea for a group assessment is for them to organise and work in a group. I'm a bit torn on this one as it seems unfair to put the onus for those who don't engage on those who do... but hey that's what happens in real life...
Any other ideas?
@nicolaromano part of the assessment as peer-led works pretty well.
@HughShanahan Would you mind elaborate on this? We have an individual assessment after the group report, which works well, still some students complain (and rightly so!) about those who do nothing in the group...
@nicolaromano ..that assessment myself (though it never got to that point). In this way students can make their point felt. Looking at my department's software engineering team project they don't make a team assessment but judge on the basis of git submits etc. for each team.
Don't feel bad - students hate team assessments!! There are students who feel that they're doing all the hard work, there are students who feel ostracised and so on so there is a lot of managing there! ....
@nicolaromano That said I attended a meeting of multiple industry representatives and they all said that being able to work in a team is essential for employability (i.e. they can train people up in relevant technical skills but if they can't work with other people then it just doesn't work out). Stick with it! I hope that this helps. Hugh
@HughShanahan Absolutely! I really like this assessment, and I have to say a lot of students do as well and put a lot of effort into it... I'd just like to improve it where possible! I do agree with you that being able to work in a group is a fundamental skill to develop!
@nicolaromano Yes - apologies for being so brief! It's been a number of years since I ran a module with team based projects. For the team-based part of the assessment (and there would also be individual assessments) then perhaps 20% of it would be peer-based, i.e. if A,B,C and D are the team members then A B and C give a mark for D, A B and D give a mark for C and so on. If the team cannot come to an agreement then I give the option to interview that team individually and make that assessment...