Team Based Work

The challenges for assessing students’ team-based work are fairly similar whether students are working entirely virtually, face-to-face or in a hybrid mode. 

Recommendations

  • Like other types of student assessment, it is critical to provide clear guidance up front to students about how you will be evaluating and grading group projects.
    • This should specify not just the weighting of any group assignments, but also whether team members will receive the same, team-level grade versus idiosyncratic grades for their individual contributions to the group.
  • To motivate team members to contribute to their group projects—and counteract social loafing—consider giving students a “team” grade and an “individual” grade for any team projects.
    • The individual project grade could be assigned by you if you have insight into team members’ individual contributions.
    • Or, this individual component could be determined by peer ratings that team members give one another.
  • Ask students to assess one another in a round-robin fashion (using, for example, Qualtrics 360) at approximately the project midpoint.
    • This assessment should be used to give students feedback on how their peers view their contributions to the group and an opportunity to course correct.

Pros & Cons

Pros

  • The benefit of having a team-level component and an individual-level component is that it gives students a way to self-govern their individual contributions to the group.
  • Using a midpoint feedback survey can also spotlight for you the teams that might be in trouble or experiencing significant levels of conflict.
    • This can give you a way to proactively coach troubled teams and offer guidance for how they can resolve intra-team conflict or coordination problems.

Cons

  • Including an individual component in a team project grade has the potential to create resentment among members of a class.
    • If students believe that their grade was negatively impacted by a peer, this can create interpersonal problems outside of the classroom (particularly among undergraduate students).
  • Asking students to rate one another at the midpoint can trigger acute conflict in groups.
    • If problems have been simmering below the surface, quantitative midpoint feedback can lead these problems to boil over.
    • Faculty must be prepared to proactively reach out to troubled groups if they provide peer feedback at the midpoint.