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
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Don McCormick
Department of Management
College of Business and Economics
California State University Northridge