Kristie – I had a similar problem. Some teams had 5 people and other teams had 6 people. If there was someone who was not present a lot on the 6-person-team, then yes – they had more points to distribute to their
remaining 4 team members. The 5-team-members balked. They said they had to work just as hard with 5 people on their team as the team who had an absent 6th person, but the 5-person team did not have the extra points to distribute among themselves.
I understood their logic, but if I gave all 5-people teams the same number of points to distribute as 6-people-teams, that gave them an unfair advantage over all 6-people-teams.
My solution? I changed my entire process of peer assessment. I designed 10 questions (that somewhat vary across the semester – I have them peer assess about 3 times), and they are to rate each team member on
each question. For each question, they have to differentiate (so everyone cannot receive a 10 (our of 10) for question 1, for example). And, they have to provide two qualitative statements for each teammate regarding what they are doing that is helpful for
the team and what they are doing that could be improved - and these statements have to be more than x number of words. The statements need to be consistent with the person’s quantitative evaluation. … This is much more involved than I’d like it to be, but
the other method had a flaw in it that I just could not defend to the students.
I’d love to hear other ideas that have worked and are more parsimonious, yet address that total-number-of-points problem!
Ann L. Smiley-Oyen, PhD
Kinesiology/Neuromotor Control
Iowa State University
Ames, IA 50011
From: Team-Based Learning [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Campana, Kristie L
Sent: Saturday, March 19, 2016 9:47 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Peer evaluation issue
Hi all,
I'm looking for some advice about how to address an issue with a peer evaluation. In my course, we have 7 people per group. I use their peer evaluations as a multiplier on
the team-based component of their grade. Specifically, I give them 600 points that they can distribute to their 6 group members (they give themselves a 0, which is omitted from the calculation). This way, if they want to give someone credit for being a great
team member, they have to take points away from at least one person in the group. I then average these points to determine what their multipliers will be. Here's a link to a blank version of the survey (created for a group of 8 members) so that you can more
easily understand what I mean: https://mnsumankatopsych.az1.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_brTC64jV7hommgZ (feel
free to fill it out and click through, it won't hurt anything).
The issue is that I have one student who has not come to class after the first day. We've had multiple conversations about it, but it is clear at this point she is not going
to come to class, and won't drop the course. However, as you can imagine, this has caused a problem with the multiplier. Her group mates have reasonably given her a zero on her peer evaluation, which means they have an extra 100 points to distribute to other
members, which results in some people getting 125% on their team grade. This is clearly not in the spirit of the evaluation, and gives members of this group a huge advantage in their grade compared to other students in the course.
I would love to just eliminate her from the evaluation, but I think I need to get student ratings on her just in case she files a grade appeal. However, I am thinking that
maybe I will just have them rate her separately, so that they can give her a zero without ending up with a bunch of extra points to distribute to other group members. Anyone ever run into this problem? What did you do?
Kristie Campana
Minnesota State University, Mankato
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