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