Assigning Grades
If learning about team processes is one of the critical aims of the group assignments it will need to be monitored and assessed. Once evidence on the final outcomes of the group work has been collected, marks need to be allocated to individual students. By far the most common approach for allocating marks is to provide a single mark to all the members of a group. The lecturer would only adjust the mark on a case-by-case basis should a major problem in the group process become evident. This is a widely used method but leads to considerable dissatisfaction if students feel that marks do not fairly reflect individual contribution.
Another popular method is a combination of group and individual activities. Students receive marks awarded for a series of individual tasks that are combined with a single group mark from the group component. Gibbs (1992) cautions that any averaging of assessment items needs to be undertaken in a way that does not to bias any single task by providing it with a disproportionate weighting in relation to the other tasks. A variation on this method is to assign specific roles in the group such as coordinator, time-keeper or note-taker and provide an individual mark for these roles.
Lejk & Wyvill (1996) outline nine methods of deriving individual grades from group assessments. Most involve the students deciding on how a single group mark is to be redistributed among the other group members. As a result of the reallocation some students will receive a final score above or below the group average based on the students' assessment of each others performance. Two widely used schemes are Divided Group Marks and Peer Assessment Factors.
Divided Group Mark
Habeshaw (1993) suggests a scheme in which the students distribute the total pool of marks between themselves. The group mark is multiplied by the number of students in the group to provide a pool of marks to be redistributed. Students can either allocate individual marks from the pool or allocate percentages based on performance in agreed criteria. In the second case an average of the student's combined marks normally becomes their final grade.
Peer Assessment Factor.
Goldfinch (1994) presents a widely used scheme for determining the individual's effort in comparison with other members of the group. It forms the basis for the SPARK web-based program developed at UTS described in greater detail in the IML Assessment Guide 1.3 . To calculate the final mark a single group mark is given by a lecturer is manipulated to derive an individual mark by multiplying a peer assessment factor with the group mark. The peer assessment factor is a confidential score nominated anonymously by each of the other group members.
The peer assessment score is arrived at by each member of the group scoring the other members against agreed criteria using a scale of 1 to 3, with 3 representing a contribution that is better than the others in the group, while 1 is a contribution that is less than the others in the group. Goldfinch includes a 0 score for no help at all in that particular criterion and a -1 score for a hindrance to the group.
The sum of each individual peer assessment score gives an individual total that is divided by the average peer assessment mark for the group. The final peer assessment factor is derived from the peer assessment score and the percent of an individual's mark taken from the group mark.
Gibbs (1992) provides a variation of peer assessment factor in which all students receive the average group score plus a peer allocated score. Each student receives an above average (+1 or +2) or below average (-1 or -2) score nominated by the other group members added to the group average. The only condition is that the average of the moderated mark must be the same as the group mark.