Assessing Group Work

Various studies highlight both the benefits and the challenges of group work in the classroom. When it comes to assessing group work, many factors have to be considered before assigning a final grade such as whether all students participated equally, whether the grades will be fair, and the requirements of the assignment. Lambert, Carter, & Lightbody (2013) used a wiki as a collaborative platform to help with more just grading of individual contributions within a group project. Their grading suggestions include: initial grading of final reports; consideration of appeals process; and differential grading (p. 173). They illustrated the grading process through the following four steps:

• Review of the Activity by User Log: instructor reviews the wiki log to assess individual contribution by looking at “timing, page activity, comments, and total contributions” (p.175);
• Reviewing the Details of Individual Contributions: instructor reviews each student’s activity in more depth to assess the quality of contribution;
• The Actions of Other Group Members: instructor reviews the Communications Page to assess the communication process among the students and the timeliness of actions (i.e. how quickly they shared or edited information);
• Summation of Evidence and Decision: instructor takes into consideration all the evidence and assigns different grades to students within the same group.

Lambert, S.C., Carter, A. J., Lightbody, M. (2013). Taking the guesswork out of assessing individual contributions to group work assignments. Issues in Accounting Education, 29(1), 169-180. doi: 10.2308/iace-50637.