Evaluating Individual Effort While Working with a Group
How do you evaluate individual members of student groups?
Peer review is a good tool and I give a form for evaluating the team members.
One of the problems I have is the learning groups are small classes. Some of my classes only have 4-6 students. With these few students it is hard to create a group. There is barely enough for one group. What are some suggestions for small classes? The class is a group in itself.
I tended to create individual projects when group projects were required. However, I started to create a group project that was class group, or just one group that included the whole class. Is this still an effective group?
In addition what if I put a poor student with a good student? Would that improve the grade of the poor student with bad study habits and potentially hurt a student with good study habits? How do others handle this situation?
EVALUATING INDIVIDUAL EFFORT WHILE WORKING WITH A GROUP IS VERY IMPORTANT FOR THE FOLLOWING REASONS:
INDIVIDUAL ROLE
EXPECTED OUTCOME
WORKING COLLABORATIVELY
DEMONSTRATE LEARNING{WRITING ESSAYS, JOURNAL ENTRIES, AND CONTENT QUIZ
An experienced instructor and group communicator begins evaluating and strategizing immediately. The key factor is the size of the class. My first statement works just fine with a small classroom. By the middle of the first day, a teacher can have a sense of who is who in a particular group. A larger class size of say 20 or more students may take more time. It may require the teacher to use tricks and shortcuts. You may have to start by dividing the class mentally into smaller groups. Or, you may try to associate a single detail with each student. Once you can mentally maneuver your students one by one, you will have an easier time moving on to evaluating and tracking progress.
I have two portions of the grade for every project. One for the product and one for each member's portion of the process. I have students asess each other and provide feedback on a confidential form. Communitation is the key!
Dr. Fu-Sen,
yes, this is an excellent point & it is also wise for the instructor to monitor the groups as much as possible.
Ryan Meers, Ph.D.
I evaluate based on both individual effort/performance as well as the group as a whole. I usually make the students state how they helped the group and what tasks/assignments they were in charge of at the end of a group presentation. They also have to turn in a short written report of this with their projects. I'll also go back and look at their individual contribution once everyone has had the opportunity to present. This usually makes the students give more of an effort because they not only know that they'll be graded individually, but they are also aware that they'll have to write about their own contributions to the group.
Sometimes it is difficult to evaluate and keep track of the actual effort an individual puts into the group, so it is vital that the instructor provides review sheets. The review sheets evaluates an individual's work by other group members as well as by the individual himself. That way the instructor will have a better idea of exactly what the individual perceives he/she has contributed in the group as well what his/her peers perceive that the individual has contributed.
Nancy,
I really do like this idea & I would say we need to make sure that we give them good guidance on how to review & what to review.
Ryan Meers, Ph.D.
Peer review is a great idea. It makes people more accountable for their input into the group when they know the group will be watching as well as the teacher.
Michael,
I agree with you that it's nice to evaluate the group as a whole, but I also like to evaluate the individuals. I do this by asking the group members, as well as trying to evaluate specific tasks. I agree that they need to leave the normal individual setting, but in most work environments, we are still evaluated for individual work as well as group work.
Ryan Meers, Ph.D.
How do you evaluate individual members of student groups?
I like to evaluate the Group as a whole. The idea of Groups is to leave the normal individual work setting and work as a Team. The learning process is better if going into the Group project that all students know this is going to be a team approach and the product of the work will be graded as one. Leaders need to learn to work with diversity and that includes possible members not pulling their weight. Strong students will tend to dominate and demand from less aggressive students but may learn a thing or two along the way? The writing styles may differ and each member will need to place a section into the project to assure each student does participate in some work. Editing and detail can be changed and discussed but the thoughts are still in the product as a whole even if there is a full edit out by the Group. Everyone then learns something along the way as a Group. The grade will then reflect the efforts of the Group to meet the criteria of the assignment, not so much on an individual’s talent.
I evaluate individual effort in a group setting by giving each individual a specific aspect of the overall assignment.
I typically have one large project for a course, that is group effort.
During the course I have Project Progress reports to evaluate and guide the groups.
Also, I have a group evaluation sheet about halfway through the project. It asks each individual in the group to evaluate the participation of all group members up to that point, including themselves. It is a confidential response, but I use it to observe future efforts.
As a student I did not like group work. Until I realized that I was trying to complete all the work fearful of the grade. Keeping this in mind as an instructor I am very committed to equal distribution of the workload. Also the use of a rubric makes a clear and concise path to individual success.
Laura ,
this is a great idea as it promotes the balance of the work & the shared responsibility.
Ryan Meers, Ph.D.
We have very defined standards for how each participant is graded within the group. While one student can certainly heavily influence the group, the group grade can not be dependent on any one student.
Christinia,
this is a good idea to really monitor them. I also like to provide specific functions/duties for them to perform.
Ryan Meers, Ph.D.
My students have a group business project. There are 3 groups of 3 students. I have one group that works very well and the other two groups are struggling to communicate with eachother. I monitor the group assignments by giving them assignments as a group to do in the xlassroom.
Terry,
yes the accountability factor is huge & we need to try & hold this up as much as possible.
Ryan Meers, Ph.D.
