Thanks for your feedback, Sarah.  I too have students evaluate others in their group when doing group projects.  Though I have them use a detailed rubric, the few times this system has been challenged is when one student, accused of not pulling her or his weight, denies it and instead suggests that the student doing the evaluating is the group's sluggard and is being vindictive.  
 
On these rare occasions I can usually sort out where the truth is (our class sizes are small).  The difficulty of sorting this out where students from other institutions are working together, though, makes me hesitant to depend on a group grade for even part of the assignment.  I'm happy to defer to the wisdom of the partners on this (if indeed we all need to use the same manner of grading), but it seems to me that discerning the amount of work of group members from other institutions (or mine) and holding them accountable creates a challenging obstacle.
 
Bruce Friesen
University of Tampa
 

________________________________

From: The Partners Project on behalf of Sarah Hernandez
Sent: Fri 2/25/2011 4:38 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Questions on final projects


Greetings,

 Thank you Rodney and Bruce.

  Combining Bruce's comment and the one from Rodney:


Because of the difficulty in holding students from other institutions accountable, I've suggested to my students that they'll be handing in individual papers.  Their work on the topic should be collective, however, and I am asking for their description of the division of labor and their part in it, as Rodney suggests. (Bruce)

I understand that I cannot however guarantee what happens at another institution, therefore I have asked my students to be specific regarding their contribution to the group project.  I will also use a group evaluation form, where team members will assess each other's efforts. But I must stress -I do not know how we can evaluate member performance of students that are not under our own guidance. Therefore, I will only access my students and their contribution to the group project. (Rodney)


I sense a bit of concern over not hurting our students as a consequence of the bad performance of the others. So, we have multiple response, one is to individualize the work, the other is to get information about their contributions. Given my experience with this challenge in team projects within my teaching, I have found that it is possible to assess the quality of both the group and the individual contribution without hurting the individual that works hard. What I do is evaluate the final group project assessing its strengths and weaknesses and then also assess the individual's contribution. It seems that in the context of a grading system (we do not have grades), it is possible to let the individual contribution override the group final outcome when necessary. 

Here are the list of questions I ask in the self-evaluation form for each team member:



A)   Did all the members of your group participate equally (sharing ideas, planning activities and responsibilities, listening?). Please specify and explain what were your responsibilities and those of other team members. 




B)   What were the challenges or difficulties that this group project entailed?

 

C)   What was the most positive aspect of this exercise? 

 

D)   Thinking about your experience in this team effort, what recommendations would you give both to professors and the students in your team to improve the quality of the team process? 

 

E) What lessons did you draw from this team-work experience?


If there are students from different institutions agreeing to do a group project, then we can cross references their responses. For instance, if more than one express the sense that one particular student was not writing as much, or tended to be late, then we know with some certainty that the student was not as strong in his/her participation. If the others, however, do not say so, then we may lead to dismiss the comment in conjunction with the details about their contributions and our assessment of the quality of those contributions. While we can not hold students in other institutions accountable (in terms of us not able to influence their grades), we can at least have a sense of the degree to which our students contributed to the group project and how others assessed them.  This, however, would require a means for students to submit their evaluations electronically and confidentially (only faculty have access).  Would this work for all partners?


Sarah



On Fri, Feb 25, 2011 at 3:31 PM, BRUCE FRIESEN <[log in to unmask]> wrote:


	Because of the difficulty in holding students from other institutions accountable, I've suggested to my students that they'll be handing in individual papers.  Their work on the topic should be collective, however, and I am asking for their description of the division of labor and their part in it, as Rodney suggests.
	 
	Bruce Friesen
	University of Tampa

________________________________

	From: The Partners Project on behalf of Coates, Rodney D. Dr.
	Sent: Fri 2/25/2011 3:27 PM
	To: [log in to unmask]
	Subject: Re: Questions on final projects
	
	

	Sarah:

	 

	I am for as much flexibility as possible. 

	 

	Let me weigh in on your questions and ask the other Partners to do so as well..

	 

	 

	Dear Partners,
	
	  My students, as well as myself, are a little unclear about how we decided to proceed with regards to the team work for the projects. 
	  In the syllabus, for those doing case studies, they are to research on a particular country of region,and " collaboratively participate to research and write a group reflection paper connecting their research to course material."  My students, however, were told in NING that they would write independent papers. So, now I'm asking two questions:
	
	1) Are we agreeing to allow students to write separate individual papers? 

	 

	I should be a group paper, but I do believe that there should be a clearly defined division of labor.

	
	
	2) If year to #1, are students allowed to agree to do a group single group paper, instead of individual ones? (I figured that when two or more of my students are in a group, they can do so for me, but if they want to collaborate with students in another institution, they faculty member needs to agree to let them do so as well. For such situations, typically, I develop self-evaluation forms where students anonymously tell me whether their team mates carried their weight. If people are interested, I can send the form I typically use with modifications for this course). 
	
	   As for 1  2, my students' preference is to have the flexibility to do either individualized or group papers. But it all depends on the faculty group's decision.

	 

	This is also my preference.  I have instructed my students to carefully detail their project, outline it, and assign different components to different persons.  These components when completed, would then be compiled and worked into a polished group project.  I understand that I cannot however guarantee what happens at another institution, therefore I have asked my students to be specific regarding their contribution to the group project.  I will also use a group evaluation form, where team members will assess each other's efforts. But I must stress -I do not know how we can evaluate member performance of students that are not under our own guidance. Therefore, I will only access my students and their contribution to the group project.

	
	
	3) For the case studies, students are required to select the country or region. As of now, their groups have not moved in this direction in their discussions.  The question is should the students in a particular group who are conducting case studies make sure they come to an agreement on the one country or region they will study? Do they have the option of selecting two countries and having their final project be a comparative one? Or can they select multiple nations? If they need a single country, can we ask the facilitator (I can do so too, otherwise) to inform them that they must come to and agreement about the country or region they wish to study?
	
	

	Students should come to agreement regarding the country or region that they choose to study.  They do have the option of selecting two countries (as we have discussed) and therefore their final pro9ject being comparative in nature.   I would hope that they narrow their choices down to no more than 2 as more would be overwhelming.  We can work through our classes, and on this list to coordinate this.

	 

	
	4) Those doing service learning will evidently have different geographical areas represented within the US (as we have few foreign partners this semester). Hence, their comparisons will be more regional (state to state). Do they need to narrow the focus of their service learning or can they still work in a broad theme? For instance, several students are interested in service learning among immigrants. 

	These are similar to the case studies -but the nature of service learning projects limits how much the students can effectively do.  I would therefore suggest that they be limited to one specific topic.

	 

	 

	However, one of my students may be interested in doing service learning among workers in an activist agricultural labor coalition (rather than a social work program). Other students may not have access to that kind of organization. 

	This is where coordination must come in. The students must be able to identify similar topical interests in order to achieve the team or group aspects of this project. 

	 

	Hence, can my student volunteer with this coalition to offer a comparative perspective to the experiences in service learning in other entities with more of a social work bend? In other words, can those doing service learning do so in various venues that provide more breath to their final paper and more flexibility in finding venues for their service learning, or would we rather they narrow their experience, to say immigrant organizations that provide educational services (or translation, or health, etc.). 

	 

	Yes, various venues, providing the same topic area would provide more breath to the final paper.  Again, I favor flexibility.

	
	
	I apologize in advance if these had been discussed and I missed those conversations or did not realize they had been settled before... 
	
	Looking forward to your responses,
	
	

	Sarah

	These are just my initial thoughts..i ask the other Partners to weigh in...it is our students and the more guidance we can provide the better.

	 

	Thanks Sarah for raising these critically important questions.  Once we formulate the answers we can individually relay them to our students and more specifically post it on the NING site under FAQ and notes.

	 

	rodney