In my Experimental course I require 2 group projects and 2 individual
projects (and some other smaller lab assignments). For the group projects,
I will allow people to do the project on their own if they feel they will
have difficulty meeting with a group since we have a large percentage of
non-traditional and commuter students, but I warn them that the amount of
work required is more than for the individual projects. This means that
most people choose to work in groups for the group projects. However, I've
recently seen an increase in the number of groups with people who are not
really participating in the group. I do let group members evaluate the
other people in their group to get an idea of who did and who didn't
contribute, and take this into consideration when assigning individual
grades for the project.
I've considered doing this by a) giving everyone in the group the same
grade for the project, then include the peer evaluations as part of the
participation grade, and b) weighting the grade on the paper by an average
of the peer evaluations. I have to admit that I'm not really happy with
either of these methods since I sometimes have groups of 4 that are evenly
split... each half feels they did more than the other half, or where one
person feels they were not allowed to contribute as much as they would have
liked... or a group where they feel one person dominated the group, etc.
I was wondering how others dealt with assigning grades for group projects.
What seems to work? What doesn't work? Any ideas, comments, suggestions,
etc. are greatly appreciated...
Related to this, if you have a group come to you and inform you that one
member of the group has not participated at all, do you make an effort to
contact that student before the project is due? Do you feel obligated to
warn the student that they will most likely receive a 0 on the project
since they haven't participated in the group, yet they could attempt to do
the project on their own? How much of an effort do you make to contact the
student, if any?
Dealing with group projects for only the second time...
- Marc
G. Marc Turner, MEd
Department of Psychology
Southwest Texas State University
San Marcos, TX 78666
phone: (512)245-2526
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
