I usually do not tell students about this ahead of time. They read it to themselves on the last day of class and figure it out and quietly do what I ask. In the past, I made the mistake of giving the team evals out to fill out outside of class. One team simply ignored me and gave everyone equal scores. Another team cleverly figured out a way to give equal points by each agreeing to make one of the others the low-pointer and, so they all ended up with equal scores anyway! I had to give them credit on that one. I am not bothered by rule-breaking, so I accepted their decisions/choices. AS others have pointed out, if the teams bond and everyone does truly contribute equally in their view, then the lesson has been learned. usually, when there is clearly someone who does less work, they are more than happy to give points accordingly.

From: Team Learning Discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Don McCormick
Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2007 11:32 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Forced Ranking in Peer Evaluation

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