When I use group projects I assign one grade to everyone in the group. I require every student to turn in an evaluation of every member in their group including themselves and assign a grade for participation. I then use these as input for the course participation grade. I have not yet been surprised by what I see in those evaluations although they do give me a better insight into what happened in the groups. I do allow students to form their own groups of 2-5 students. I also leave it up to the students as to how they want to divide the work load and whether it should be evenly divided. Students may use me as a consultant and/or abitrator but otherwise I do not get involved in group operations. If students have used me as a consultant and an arbitrator and still are unable to get a group member to do their part, the group may drop the student from the group. In over 10 years I have only had this happen in two groups. I did have two groups last semester that I knew were having problems but did not come to me until two weeks before the end of the semester; that was the first time any groups had waited that long. One group actually was able to work their problems out but the other did not have the time. Since they also did not have the time to go through arbitration they were not able to drop the problem student and the whole group suffered for their lack of action. Joyce Morris Public Health Sciences Wichita State University
