UBC Mailing Lists 17.0 - TEAMLEARNING-L Archives

I use a similar method as Jim. My current class is 111 veterinary students and is divided into 19 teams (16, six member teams and 3, five member teams). At the beginning of the course, the students choose the weights of the various scores: individual, team and peer evaluation. We use Larry Michealsen's "fishbowl technique" to determine the grade weights. With my current class, the peer evaluation is 10% of the final grade, but previous classes have chosen a higher peer evaluation weight. I give each student 10 points per team member and encourage them to distribute the points according to who is contributing to the team's success. I discourage students from just awarding everyone 10 points unless all have contributed equally and point out that this is likely to help their classmates understand how others see their contributions. They will be working in teams for the rest of their careers and it is good practice to do so. We have an online system to evaluate the teammates anonymously as a dry run mid-semester and then again for course credit right before finals. We associate a comment field with each student team member for constructive criticism and another for positive contributions. This system has worked very well for the past 4 years. The student comments have been consistently positive and constructive and this process has fared very well on student course evaluations. Once the individual scores, team scores and peer evaluations are determined, each is multiplied by the factor determined by the students on the first day and this becomes their final score.

On Oct 15, 2007, at 10:22 AM, Sibley, Jim wrote:

Hi Sandy

I use the maintenance method

I assign a fixed number of base points per member (maybe 10 or a 100) this gets around the groups of different size issue...... I use this to calculate the piece of the 5% peer evaluation grade that they will receive

I tell the students that giving everyone 10 makes everyone average....and I tell them that average is 75% of the maintenance mark.....I tell them that we are looking for the differences in effort

points assigned / base points X 75%

We use our peer evaluation software to facilitate this (see attached using 100 base points per member)

Jim

From: Team Learning Discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Sandy Cook
Sent: Monday, October 15, 2007 4:51 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Peer Evaluations

There was a great thread about Peer evaluation in January, which was informative, but truthfully, I did not appreciate the discussion at the time.

We have just completed our first peer evaluation process and I have some questions. We believe in the peer evaluation process and will not abandon it, but there have been some issues.

In the TBL book there are two forms of peer evaluation described (percentage and maintenance). Several pros and cons are listed, but mostly ending with a suggestion of a positive learning note. Of the two methods described, selfishly I chose the percentage one because it made more sense to me and was easier to calculate. The students however, are incensed (well maybe too strong of a word, but upset) that it is a zero-sum game. They don't mind giving points to those who contribute, but they do not want to take points away from those who contribute less.
·         How do you rationalize the zero-sum concept?
·         How does one explain the value of moderating the scores? Maybe it is a cultural thing - being nice, but the idea of taking away something they believe they have earned is painful. How do you tell them that they have not really earned the group scores unless they participate in the group?
·         When the group size results in a proportion that is not easily divisible by 5 – and they want to give the team equal marks – but can’t. For example a team of 7, with 6 ratings can only give 16.7 and 16.6 – someone will be a bit higher and a bit lower.

Using the maintenance method might solve the logical problem by making the peer assessment an added component to the grade - not subtractive (on the surface).   If I were to switch to that method,
·         How do you decide what % of the final grade should the peer assessment be?
·         Is it really any difference – or does it just appear that way to the students because they see it as adding not subtracting?
·         How do faculty feel about inflating grades by making portion of success be solely on peer points?
·         Will I exchange a student fight for a faculty one?

This is quite a contentious topic, and I can see why people give up on it – or move away to more feedback rather than grade moderation – but we really feel that it is important to keep – so any advice on how to deal with student’s anxiety is most welcomed.

Sandy

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Sandy COOK, PhD | Associate Dean, Curriculum Development | Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore | W: (65) 6516 8722| F: (65) 6227 2698 |

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