MAILING LISTS

Hi TBLers

I teach management and I used the peer evaluation form that requires
students to rate their peers and give at least one a "9" (which is
one below average) and one "11" (which is one above average). When I
announced it last night, the class exploded in a revolt, objecting
that it wasn't fair because "in my group everyone did an equally good
job of contributing," they couldn't figure out a basis for rating
others one way or another, etc.

I know the form says "If you give everyone pretty much the same score
you will be hurting those who did the most and helping those who did
the least, " but I also am sympathetic to the students' point of view.

I understand the reason given above for forcing some minimal ranking
and I also realize that students are often terrified of giving
negative feedback to other students. I want to help them learn to
overcome this fear because they need to learn how to give negative
feedback in the workplace. If they don't learn to do this, they will
truly suck as managers. But it isn't clear that in the cases where
they genuinely feel each person in their group has contributed
equally how forced ranking will help them learn this.

Is there more to the requirement of forced ranking that I am missing?
 From your point of view, what is the learning objective that this
helps students to meet?

- Don
---
Don McCormick
Department of Management
College of Business and Economics
California State University Northridge
https://www.csun.edu/~dmccormick/Don%20McCormick/Home.html