Milestones for assessment

Measuring individual student contribution

Louise Young, School of Marketing

Students in Applications of Market Research complete a major market research project for clients who come from the University community, non-government organisations and firms who require a small-scale research projects completed outside of their normal budget. Each project is a combination of thirty students working alternatively on their own and collaboratively. Individually they work in developing the original research ideas, building an instrumentation package and writing the final report. The students collaborate on the research proposal, collection of data and depending on the nature of the project, in the data analysis. Only the best results of each stage selected go through to the next phase of development.

The students are taught to manage their own time and their own project to ensure the research meets the required standards of style and quality. The evolutionary nature of the projects requires a continuous form of assessment to provide clear targets for students who meet in their teams over the 16-week process. The first assessment of the group's performance occurs after an oral presentation in Week 2, where the groups have to design a suitable research process to resolve the research question. The groups get immediate feedback on their proposal and this process is repeated in subsequent weeks until week 6 when all students receive a formal progress report that assesses the contributions of the various members to their group.

Throughout the semester there is usually one person in the group who is the supervisor liaison and works closely with the teaching staff to ensure that the process is functioning well. It is stressed that should a problem eventuate the students require documentation to support any allegations. If students complain that one of the group has not contributed to the assignment the teaching staff ask to see the evidence. Each group has to keep a minute book that documents all meetings they have, as they would for any organisation that keeps formal minutes. Any member of the group can make whatever statement in the minute book they want. Each of the group members has to sign off on the minute book that they have noted these comments. If they disagree with what the secretary of the group is saying it is perfectly acceptable to write, "I totally disagree". The final group mark is shared equally among the group members and is derived from a pattern of results observed in the supervisor's collaboration in the project.