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Assessment of Teamwork
Fairness and equity are two important issues when assessing team assignments. Should everyone in the team receive the same marks in team project, even when individual contributions were not equal? How can you reward diligence and discourage
free ridership?
What to assess
- Product related outcomes (e.g., presentation, report, research paper) will assess the quality of the final product.
- Process related outcomes (e.g. ability to meet deadlines, contribute fairly, communicate effectively) will assess how well the team worked together and how each member contributed to the team.
How much weight to assign
Some instructors will use equal weights (i.e., they make the team grade worth 50% and the individual grade worth 50%). Others may split it 70:30 or 30:70. There’s no perfect breakdown, but the grading scheme should reflect your goals for student
learning and seek to motivate the kind of work you want to see. For example, if developing teamwork skills is one of your learning objectives for the assignment, then your assessment should be weighted more toward the team grade. If the assessment
is heavily weighted toward the individual grade (i.e., team grade is 15% or less), this may inadvertently discourage teamwork. To counter this, consider using the following statement to allow for assessing the individual with respect to his/her effort
and contribution to the team:
To do well on the team assessment, it is necessary for you to demonstrate positive interdependence and teamwork. In principle, you will receive the same marks as your team. However, your individual score may vary based on feedback about your contributions to the group project.
How to assess
The team assessment can be graded either by the instructor, by students or through self-reflection. Each method has potential advantages and drawbacks which are summarized in the table below:
| Instructor-Led Assessment | Peer Assessment | Self-Reflection | |
|---|---|---|---|
Nature of task | The instructor will grade a student’s contribution to the teamwork based on set criteria | Team members will grade each other’s contribution | Each student will submit a self-reflection piece on their learning as a team |
Ownership | Instructor | Students | Student and instructor |
Effort | Scores to be tabulated by the instructor | Instructor to coordinate and tabulate scores from peer feedback | The instructor will grade all the self-reflection pieces |
Time required | Short – Marks can be allocated during presentation / grading of group work | Medium – Scores will need to be tabulated after submission by the student | Long – Every reflection essay will need to be graded |
Instructor-led grading is easier to implement since you have control over how the marks are awarded. As the subject expert, you are often the best candidate to assess the product.
Best for:
When you have the opportunity to observe students in their teams, this may be the quickest way to assess their contribution. For example, in some long-term project-oriented courses, instructors have several consultation
sessions with students. It is thus possible to have a good sense of how the teams are working together as well as the contributions of individual members.
- You may have difficulty in remembering every student's contribution, which may lead to fairness and equity issues.
- Because you may have a potentially complex system, a great deal of record-keeping on each student may be required.
- To help you remember each student's name, you can create a classroom roster with the student's name and faces tag together.
- Use symbols and annotations every time a student has contributed to the class discussion. This will also help you remember their names.
- Develop an assessment rubric so that you can properly assess the student's contribution to the project.
Example:
Here is an example (from MS3015) of a rubric to assess teams by the instructors of a material science course where both the product and the process are addressed.
Peer assessment is an approach where the students’ contributions to their teams are assessed by their teammates.
- When students have to work as a team outside of class, they may be the best judge of one another’s contribution to the team.
- This is a very direct form of feedback for students in a team setting, which can help them improve in future team assessment.
- Students may not take the peer assessment seriously if there is no significant grades assigned to it.
- Students may adopt a competitive stance or “friendship marking” (Liu & Carless, 2006), which would impede the intended outcome of collaboration and teamwork (Boud, Cohen, & Sampson, 2014), especially if the peer evaluation carries a significant weight.
- Have students provide justification and evidence for their evaluation.
- Grade students based on the quality of their feedback to peers (Bloxham & West, 2004).
- Consider doing an anonymous peer evaluation to avoid "friendship marking".
- Use online peer evaluation tools, such as NTU's eUReka, to ensure student's identity remains anonymous to their peers.
Here is an example of a peer evaluation (used in NTU's Interdisciplinary Collaborative Core courses). More examples can be found by returning to the Assessing Your Students page.
Peer feedback can be used as a formative assessment throughout the course. For example, students may be asked mid-semester to give feedback to each other regarding two questions:
- What do I hope you would keep doing?
- What do I wish you would start doing?
Supporting students to communicate openly with one another for improving their teamwork skills.
As formative feedback is not graded, students may find it unnecessary to provide any constructive feedback to their peers, and hence, not take the feedback seriously. You can minimise this issue by clarifying to students the value of such feedback.
How to form groups
Should teams be homogeneous or heterogeneous? Research in Team-Based Learning show that heterogeneous teams result in the generation of more ideas, since students are able to bring in their own perspectives and enhance each other's learning (Michaelsen
& Sweet, 2008; Watson, Michaelsen, & Sharp, 1991). However, some studies suggest that heterogeneous teams benefit the low-ability students most (Hooper & Hannafin, 1988), while middle- and high-ability students learn better in homogeneous
teams as they encouraged to engage more in discussions, share the same goals or are able to learn at the same pace (Lou, et al., 1996).
We encourage instructors to experiment with various approaches and see which best support your students
in their learning. Here are some ideas to help you form groups in your classroom, as suggested by TeachHub (visit their page for
more ideas). There are also apps, such as Class Dojo, that can help you randomly arrange students into teams.
- Grouped according to same skill level. Perfect for differentiation. You can have ability-specific tasks assigned to each group.
- Grouped to mix skill levels. Students learn well when different skills and levels are mixed. With this you can make sure your strongest students are intermingled with others.
- Grouped for classroom management. We all know those friends who are more likely to get off task than create a quality product. Pre-assign groups and make sure students who need to be separated are kept apart.
- Grouped according to interest. If you’re aware of different interests of your students via discussion or a survey, you might want to put them together and have them connect their common interest to the task.
- Students select own group, with exceptions. A variation from above, you can let them choose their groups but add, “Don’t join with the last person you were with,” or “No more than this many people.”
- Students grouped based on responses. Give a survey or quiz, and group students according to what they think or how they score.
Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007, March). The Power of Feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 81-112.
Hooper, S., & Hannafin, M. J. (1988). Cooperative CBI: The effects of heterogeneous versus homogeneous grouping on the learning of progressively complex concepts. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 4(4), 413-424.
Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (2009). An educational psychology success story: Social interdependence theory and cooperative learning. Educational Researcher, 38(5), 365-379.
Lou, Y., Abrami, P. C., Spence, J. C., Poulsen, C., Chambers, B., & d’Apollonia, S. (1996). Within-class grouping: A meta-analysis. Review of educational research, 66(4), 423-458.
Michaelsen, L. K., & Sweet, M. (2008). The essential elements of team‐based learning. New Directions for Teaching and Learning(116), pp. 7-27. doi:10.1002/tl.330
Michaelsen, L. K., Knight, A. B., & Fink, L. D. (2004). Team-based learning: A transformative use of small groups. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing, LLC.
Slavin, R. E. (1996). Research on Cooperative Learning and Achievement: What We Know, What We Need to Know. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 21, 43-69.
Watson, W., Michaelsen, L. K., & Sharp, W. (1991). Member Competence, Group Interaction, and Group Decision Making: A Longitudinal Study. Journal Of Applied Psychology, 76(6), 803-809.