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?
@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 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...
@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 We ask each member of a group to provide a score for each other member, tally those and add it (representing 20% of mark) to the team score that we assessed. Outliers are quite obvious but people are also generous if there are no issues.
@jwoodgett This is a very nice idea! How do you deal with the obvious outliers?
@nicolaromano Keep an eye on them. There’s usually just one or two (per class of 60-70) and either meeting with them or emailing can help. Sometimes there are good excuses (sickness, etc), sometimes they have difficulty interacting and need encouragement/guidance. Occasionally you’ll get an overly controlling/dominant person (invariably ranked down by group mates).
@jwoodgett Ahhhhh, I misunderstood what you meant with outliers... I thought you were talking about the students' scores, still your reply makes a lot of sense 🙂
Rachel Hayes-Harb discusses her approach to student collaboration and group assessment in the following webinar;
https://youtu.be/5ExuqTkNNuU
For the specific coverage of your questions, start from about 9.30 in
@johnntowse Thank you! Haven't yet had the time to go through this but looks very interesting!
@nicolaromano
When I had a group assessment on a final year option (a powerpoint based group presentation) I used a yellow and red card sanction system (football parallels) - group members could report individuals and, depending on what the group & individual said, people could get a yellow (warning) card which could be later rescinded or a red card issued.
System was v rarely deployed but it offered a mechanism to air grievances and its often the perception of consequences that is important
@nicolaromano how about flipping the assessment to an individual one but designing the activities to require teamwork? In my own case I have pairs embedded in a group of 8 and the assessment required them to work as pair the get the basic info, and that basic info needs to communicate to the group so the group as whole will have correct understanding of the assignment and therefore they will be able to do the assessment at individual level, failing teamwork fails there own marks
@kofanchen This is a very good idea. The specific nature of this particular assessment might make it a tad difficult to implement but I can think of other use cases for sure! Thank you!
@nicolaromano part of the assessment as peer-led works pretty well.