Further Readings: Assessing Group Work
Conway, R., Kember, D. Sivan, A. and Wu, M. (1993) Peer Assessment of an Individual?s Contribution to a Group Project. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 18 (1) 45-56
Conway et al, describe the introduction of peer assessment into group assignments. In response to students? complaints about the fairness of the assessment they developed a method of rewarding individual effort in projects based on a modification of the Goldfinch & Raeside procedure. They argue students found awarding an individual weighting for their contribution simple and transparent.
Goldfinch, J. (1994). Further Developments in Peer assessment of Group Projects Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 19 (1) 29-35
Goldfinch and Raeside (1990) were the first to report their method using peer assessment of group projects. Goldfinch describes refinements to an earlier peer assessment scheme for awarding marks to individuals after a group project. The original method was a two part scheme in which students firstly identify which group member performed which tasks and then the students? assigned a mark for the group work skill. Goldfinch found that only Part 2 needs to be calculated for a reliable score of student contribution. Goldfinch also describes a number of safeguards against invalid assessment.
Rafiq, Y. & Fullerton, H. (1996). Peer assessment of Group Projects in Civil Engineering. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 21 (1) 69-81
Rafiq & Fullerton describe another variation of Goldfinch & Raeside?s (1990) procedure of allocating student marks in groups. They argue their modification makes the method more appropriate for professional practice. They replaced the students marking other students? projects with student diaries that record the involvement of all group members. Tutors use these diaries to confirm their observations of individual responsibility to the final project. Rafiq & Fullerton found this changed the assessments character so that it was more formative and led to a greater involvement by students.
Lejk, M. & Wyvill, M. (1996). A survey of methods of deriving individual grades from group assessments. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 21 (3) 267-281
Lejk. & Wyvill outline nine methods for deriving individual grades from group assessments. They conclude that group assessment is a reliable instrument when a more holistic approach was taken even when performed by non-professional assessors. They suggest that the main criteria for decision-making should be an overall impression with care taken when dealing with specific personality traits.
Gatfield, T. (1999). Examining student satisfaction with Group Projects and Peer Assessment. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 24 (4) 365-377
Gatfield surveyed 261 students to determine their experiences of group work. Overall he found a high level of agreement that peer assessment was an appropriate and fair way to assess their efforts in groups. International students in particular had a high level of satisfaction with peer marking processes. Qualitative comments indicated that students wanted their tutors to offer more private consultation times and allocate more time in tutorials to assist with group work.
Topping, K. (1999). Peer Assessment Between Students in Colleges and Universities. Review of Educational Research, 68 (3) 249-276.
Topping provides a meta-analysis of the application of peer-assisted learning in a wide range of subject areas to review the benefits and disadvantages of involving students in assessment. The majority of the studies found peer assessments were reliable and valid for a wide range of applications but demonstrated levels of variance in the details on some projects. It was perceived as demanding but reduced anxiety in tests, and allocation of grades leading to gains in test performance. Peer assessment was less likely to be used for formative feedback and when it was it improved confidence on presentation and appraisal skills. In the assessment of professional skills Topping found peer assessment was as least as reliable as teacher assessment.
Li, L. (2001). Some Refinements on Peer assessment of Group Projects. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 26 (1) 5-18
Li reviews the most common methods used to refine Goldfinch and Raeside?s (1990) peer assessment of group projects. He introduces a normalisation procedure to provide some balance to subjectivity and over-generous marking. He argues this only needs to be used when there is obvious bias in students? assessments.
Lejk, M. & Wyvill, M. (2001). Peer assessment of Contributions to a Group Project: a comparison of holistic and category-based approaches. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 26 (1) 19-39
Lejk and Wyvill wanted to determine whether it was better to use a single grade awarded to each student to represent their contribution to a group project or accumulate a series of grades matching a number of categories. They argue that both methods led to a high degree of agreement between peers in a group. While the category-based approach was able to detect a misalignment between the projects goals and group work, the holistic approach provided a wider spread of grades and therefore Lejk and Wyvill conclude is a better relative indication of individual contribution to the project.