Group Assessment Work...

SWOT

Yay or Nay?

For my money, load of juggly balls. Depending on your luck, you might once in a blue moon get a good group and all pull together.

More likely you'll get a mix, where half the group is a write off and the other half pulls through.

If your unlucky, it's rambo time cause your up a creak without a paddle with a few numpties.

In final year it is quite annoying as our degree's are in the hands of other people. Sure you can do your best to pull together the groups and muddle through, but if it was not for peer assessment id probably tell some people to go and...;)

Course, others seem to like it. Less work, no exam stress and more time. Anyone in that camp want to explain the benefits in final year?

Aside from the experience of working with yet another..so and so...

Kinski

Sucks. Okay outside of final year, since it doesn't count towards your final degree grade, and is a good way of getting to know classmates, but I'd hate to be the student who ends up with a 2:1 instead of a 1:1 because of a crappy group.

Duddy

Business Dept. have started using Sparkplus on all group assignments. Basically you rate everyone in your group on how they were in the project and they're either rewarded or penalised according to their average mark. Eg. if the group gets 50% and one person just dosses, he gets a **** peer mark and ends up with under 40%

Working well so far I think, and I have a group project for every module!

watchingd

Been in so many group projects at this stage, they are terrible. The peer marking is not a great system whatsoever, it all depends on the honesty of others in the group. If a project is done by two people, one gives a 70% 30% mark and the other gives a 50% 50%etc then who does the lecturer believe?

Within group projects there are too many scenarios where a person can be docked marks; Not working as a team, rest of team does little work, peer marking isn't done fairly, team's are made unfairly.

One of my main issue comes with the allocation of the groups, in one case our lecturer set up groups by average grade, those who usually got top marks got picked with mid mark and bottom mark students to make the groups "even". How can this be considered fair if the grade of this module directly affects final year marks?

It should be scrapped.

Mastroph

The group marking system for Algorithms and Data Structures (CS210) is probably the best I've come across. We're marked in teams of 3 for answering clicker questions and for labs. For the clicker questions, the system picks a random answer from the answers given from your team, and you all get marks based on that answer. If you don't answer the question you don't get marks. Labs are similar, though I think they might be graded more as an average or something.

The idea of all this is that you communicate what you think about the questions with you team and try to make sure everyone undersatands the material. I'm pretty happy with it so far, and I wouldn't mind seeing more of this kind of thing in the future.

Tesco Massacre

Luckily, I've never had to do any group assessments. Probably just as well since I'm more of a lone wolf.


Awoooooo

Moon Indigo

Love the picture. I'm in first year of a course that so far (and I know its not going to change!) depends greatly on group work. Ummm . . . not so sure its for me. I have yet to work in any group here or otherwise that really worked as a 'group'. It normally turns out with two or three of the group doing the organising etc etc. Maybe it can but I'm not sure think I'll go find that moon myself

DB21

Depends. Worked well in Molecular Biology last year, but it didn't work for Education.

BuroniKiisu

I could never stand 'em, personally.

DB10

I think it's a load of rubbish really. The workplace and college are completely different scenarios with working in teams. The only benefit of doing it is in first year you get to know people. I didn't even know they did it in final years. It's laughable stuff you could be landed with a worse degree because you have a bad group. How backward is the thinking.

I'm in one group, were they seem to want to meet everyday for **** all. Then if you miss a meeting they plan on giving a worse evaluation. Another group seem to do everything by themselves and not inform me. Then they like to imply I'm a dosser for doing nothing. There is no winning with some groups. Another lad I know in a group of 7 only 2 turn up for meetings or work. Even with the peer evaluation thing ,which just makes everyone suspicious and edgy, it's still a load of bollocks.

Seren_

Group projects sound kinda more effort then they're worth really... I think I had to do 3 group presentations all throughout college, but tbf there wasn't really anything riding on them at all. Can't imagine how annoying it must be if you end up losing marks over it. My brother and cousin do engineering and they seem to have loads of them!

Ms. Koi

I am very up and down with group work. I always seem to get put into groups with people who don't like working so I end up doing the work. I don't want to get a poor result so the responsibility is left to me. People seem to think that I will do the work and don't bother!

I got really sick of it last year and emailed my lecturer. He was brilliant! The other students that did nothing got the marks they deserved (not very much) and the students that did got more marks.

If the problem is really bad, email your lecturer and ask to talk him/her about the group. It's much better to sort the problem as early as possible!

orl677

DB10 wrote: »

I think it's a load of rubbish really. The workplace and college are completely different scenarios with working in teams. The only benefit of doing it is in first year you get to know people. I didn't even know they did it in final years. It's laughable stuff you could be landed with a worse degree because you have a bad group. How backward is the thinking.

I'm in one group, were they seem to want to meet everyday for **** all. Then if you miss a meeting they plan on giving a worse evaluation. Another group seem to do everything by themselves and not inform me. Then they like to imply I'm a dosser for doing nothing. There is no winning with some groups. Another lad I know in a group of 7 only 2 turn up for meetings or work. Even with the peer evaluation thing ,which just makes everyone suspicious and edgy, it's still a load of bollocks.

You've nailed it there. I agree with every single word of this.

SWOT

Currently every module i'm in has a group CA. Three of them are completely based on it, same team for the whole modules. Seems to be the same story for most of the Business Department/Innovation Department. Bit extreme for final year, I doubt ill ever work in six separate teams for the duration of four months ever again!

My degree is more like the average score of thirty something other people so far, with another Semester to go :rolleyes:

SparkPlus is good in theory, in reality ill most likely end up with some of these people again in another team, so it's like a daft version of Big Brother or something with the scoring.

Not everyone is bad of course, just id prefer to take my chances on my own..

shamtastic

Not a fan of excessive group work but prefer when it's randomly selected who you're with as working with friends can be hard when people become too laid back. My lecturers keep picking groups alphabetically, so it's the same people every so often which makes it stale.

Sparkplus would be effective in a group of ten or so, but when there's four or five of you it can be fairly obvious who's been marking people down and makes things awkward.