Assessing contributions to Group Assignments Lucy Johnston

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Assessing contributions to Group AssignmentsLucy
Johnston Lynden Miles(2004)

• Amy Burge, Caroline Gibson, Rick Gilroy, Michelle
  Goshawk and Sarah Weller

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Group Projects

• Group projects provide an opportunity to promote
  skills such as leadership, time keeping and
  communication as well as social and interpersonal
  skills.

• There are many advantages to working as a group

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Benefits

• Improvement of ideas
• More scope for opinions
• Promotes active learning
• Less bias
• Decreases the amount of blame if the project is a
  failure.
• More brains mean more knowledge!

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Miles and Johnstons experiment had two main aims

• To investigate the use of peer- assessment
• To determine whether self-assessment should be
  included in peer assessment.

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Their method

• 61 Undergrad. Social Psychology Students were
  told to work in groups on a project.
• They were allowed to form their own groups.
• The groups were 3(n2), 4(n10) and 5(n3)
• The groups were also allowed to chose what
  project they worked on from a list of three.

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• The chosen project was researched as a group, and
  each member completed an individual lab report.
• Each participant was then asked to rate the
  levels of contribution of the other members,
  including themselves
• Management and Task Function skills were rated.
• For each task, the individual was scored between
  -1 and 3. 3 being a major contribution and -1
  being a hindrance to the group.

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Results

• It was found that there was a relatively strong
  agreement within groups as to which members
  contributed most.
• The findings were consistent with the persons
  findings of self bias, the agreement was greater
  when self assessment was excluded.
• This suggests that individuals did not evaluate
  their personal contributions.

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• So we can see, from their research, that students
  rated themselves far more highly than others
  rated them.
• They also rated others in the group lower than
  what their actual rating was.

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Johnston and Miles concluded that

• Students take the peer assessment process very
  seriously
• Students show a self-bias, rating themselves
  above other students.
• Contribution index had little to no effect.
• There was a strong correlation between the
  contribution and overall assignment score.

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Other Findings

• Maguire and Edmondson (2001)
• Carried out a similar experiment involving
  students and a group project.
• Students were asked whether or not theyd like to
  work in the same group again on another project.
• Of the 58 participants only one replied no
  whereas the other 57 all wanted to use the same
  groups.

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• The single participant who decided not to work in
  a group again said it was because his group
  showed little enthusiasm and did not put much
  effort into the final paper.
• However the rest of his group said they felt
  their project went well,and would all liketo
  work in the samegroup again. They felt their
  groups goals were achieved.

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Large Groups sharing marks for group contributions

• Habeshaw, Gibbs, Habeshaw (1991)
• Designed an experiment in which the groups
  themselves allocated marks based on each others
  levels of contribution.
• They suggested that this would be important as
  they (the students) are in the best position to
  decided who gets the marks.
• They found that students were very reluctant to
  mark each other down. This was most likely out of
  a desire for social acceptance.

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Evaluation

• Johnston and Miles report is a rich source of
  information, with a very large scope of topic,
  ranging from peer assessment, group skills and
  social acceptance.
• However this is marred by the fact that their
  participant choice had such a small scope only
  psychology students, who already knew each other
  fairly well. It may have been better to have a
  group of random participants working on an
  unfamiliar task.

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• Students were allowed to choose their own groups-
  which will inevitably have led to friendship
  groups. This will have effected the dynamics of
  the experiment.
• The report is long winded and overly complicated.
• There was no real hypothesis stated for this
  study they just appear to be investigating
  into Leaving the study fairly open for
  interpretation.

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• Furthermore, whilst Johnston and Miles did draw
  some conclusions ignoring the self assessment
  element, the peer assessment results may have
  been affected by the procedure of self assessing
  having happened.
• Lejk and Wyvill (2001) concluded that the fairest
  way to conduct such assessments is to perform the
  peer assessment part in secret and to ignore the
  self assessment element in any final review. In
  addition to this, Norton (2004) argues that
  focussing on assessment criteria can be
  counterproductive.

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Any Questions?
?
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The EndThanks for Listening!
(applause now)
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References Because plagiarism is a bad thing

• Bartells, L. K Bommer, W. H. Rubin, R. S.
  (2000)                                            
                                Student
  performance Assessment centres versus
  traditional classroom evaluation techniques
• Business and Management Practises   75 (4)
  198-201
• Habeshaw, Gibbs Habeshaw (1991) Norton
  (2004) from
• Wakekin, D McInnes, L. (2006)
• Psychology Group Work, Peer Assessment
  Assessment for learning
• http//www.nl-webspace.co.uk/unn_evdw3/py405
  /2006/papers/previous_material/opt_2004.ppt
• Johnston, L Miles, L. (2004)
• Assessing contributions to group
  assignments
• Assessment Evaluation in Higher Education
• 29(6)
• Maguire, S Edmondson (2001)
• Student Evaluation and Assessment of group
  projects
• Journal of Geography in Higher Education
  25(2) 209-217
• http//www.iml.uts.edu.au/assessment/students/peer
  .html