Taking the stress out of group assessment

Jill Clark

Whitireia New Zealand

Trish Baker

Wellington Institute of Technology

Our aim for today:

• To introduce appropriate assessment methods for cooperative learning

Cooperative learning

Learning that takes place in a stable formal group of two or more students who work

together and share the workload equitably as they progress towards assessed learning

outcomes.

OR: Cooperative Learning

• a waste of time

• a great way to avoid the hard work of lecturing

• an ideal paradigm for lovers of social loafing

• another left-wing harebrained idea advocated by aging hippies

• some or all of the above(Diane F Halpern)

The literature says that cooperative learning improves students’:

• Academic performance

• Interpersonal skills

• Intercultural skills

• Higher–level thinking skills

• Readiness for work

Group Exercise

• Introduce yourself to the rest of your group

• Discuss the issues that you see with assessing groups

• Assign a member of your group to report back

Assessment issues in group work

• Perceived unfairness

• Social loafing

• What to assess:– Product

– Process

– Both

• How to assess– Group

– Individual

Group assessment principles

• Assessment should be valid and reliable

• Assessment should be transparent

• Allocation of marks should be consistent with the learning objectives of the assessment

This may be more difficult to manage in a group assessment than in an individual

assessment

Thinking about group assessment

• What are the characteristics of an appropriate group task?

• How does a group task differ from an individual task?

• How can we discourage the group from simply dividing up the task/s, completing the work individually, then putting it together as the group output?

What is an appropriate group task?

An effective group task:

Is open-ended and complex

Requires a range of abilities and skills

Can not be completed easily by one person

Requires interaction, choices and decisions

Allows for a range of perspectives

Possible learning outcomes from group work

• Ability to complete the task/s as a group

• Ability to apply small group skills and gain new skills

• Ability to manage the group processes and relationships

• Ability to reflect on and document the group experience

Product or process: what are you assessing?

• Are you assessing: – the actual outcome – report, presentation etc

(product)

– how the student or group achieved the outcome (process)

– what the student has learnt from the process (personal development)

– all the above

How should we assess group work?

• Should we give students all the same mark [assess the product only] ?

• Should we give a mark based on each person’s individual contribution to the group performance?

• Should we assess group processes?

• Should we assess personal learning?

What assessment options are available?

• Assessment of product only.

• Assessment of product with lecturer adjustment.

• Individual marks for allocated sections of product.

• Individual marks based on a subsequent examination/ test/report

• Peer assessment/self assessment

• Reflective work

AN EXAMPLE OF INTEGRATED ASSESSMENT METHODS

Student Industry Projects

Student Industry Projects: Learning outcomes

• Ability to produce professional outputs

• Ability to apply knowledge and skills learnt in prior papers on their degree and gain required new skills

• Ability to manage the project and the team

• Ability to maintain appropriate and professional communication with stakeholders in the project

• Ability to reflect on and document all aspects of the process of the project

A suggested strategy for fairer assessment

Process: Project management

• Project management/planning

• Time management

• Professionalism

• Interaction with client

• Meeting management

• Documentation (meeting, status reports, milestones)

• Research

Product

• Project outputs

• Proposal

• Reports

• Data analysis

• Poster

• Presentations

Process: Team management

• Monitoring of team performance

• Conflict management

• Evaluation of own and peers' performance and contribution to group

Process: Reflective work

• Evaluation of personal competencies and skills developed or enhanced

• Evaluation of the group and project management processes

• Evaluation of personal learning

Student Industry Projects

Assessment: 15%ProfessionalismDocumentation

Group and individual

Assessment: 65%Proposal 10%Report 40%

Presentations 10%Poster presentation 5%

Group

Assessment:Self/Peer assessment applied to report mark

Individual

Assessment: 20%Journal

Reflective essay

Individual

An assessment strategy that students may perceive as fair will include

• A combination of group and individual assessment

• Assessment of the product

• Assessment of process (both task and group management)

• Assessed reflective elements

• Some form of peer evaluation and/or self evaluation

Group tasks exercise

• How appropriate are these tasks for group work?

• What is being assessed in each task?

• What assessment methods are being used in each task?

• Will the assessment methods for each task address the issues raised at the start of the workshop?

“We will never achieve fair assessment but we can make it

fairer”

(Stobart, 2008, p. 113)