Collaborative Group Assessment Tasks

Assessing students for group work and tasks is becoming more common – partly because the collaborative skills students learn by working in groups are being seen as increasingly important, and partly because it produces less marking for teachers. But the constant cry comes: is group assessment fair? What happens if one member of the group doesn’t pull their weight? Or if terrible arguments break out? This article will examine some of the key issues of group assessment from the points of view of both students and staff.

There are a number of decisions to be made when designing a group assessment task. From the point of view of students, the two most important decisions are how groups will be formed and how marks will be allocated.

Allowing students to choose their own groups can create problems – from the obvious of shy or unpopular students being left out, to inequities inherent when students of similar abilities group themselves together. However, students can still learn a lot from facing these problems. On the other hand, using teacher-designated groups is often more akin to the experiences students will have beyond their education, for example, in a workplace, when project team members may have personality clashes or widely varying interests and abilities.

The allocation of marks is also a key issue for students, as many are concerned that if members of a group are all given the same mark, regardless of individual efforts, that some students will be “freeloaders” and contribute little. While this again is an important issue for students to address and learn from, there are also appropriate measures to take to minimise the problem. For example, students can be asked to negotiate the marks deserved by each member of their groups, or to provide a confidential peer and self assessment, which can be taken into account in their final mark. Alternatively, an element of the group project can involve work to be submitted by individual members to contribute to their own mark.

For teachers, an important issue is to ensure that the group assessment task fits the objectives of the course, and that students are given the opportunity to learn appropriate group work skills before they are assessed on them. While the sorts of skills facilitated by group work – such as negotiation, cooperation, communication and other interpersonal skills – are clearly valid and useful, they should only be assessed where they are explicitly considered a key component of the course. If this is the case, then students should also be explicitly taught about these skills so that they can then put them into practice as they work on their group assessment task.

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