Peer Review of Teamwork for Encouraging Equal Commitment to the Group Effort

Willey, K; Wandel, A

Peer Review of Teamwork for Encouraging Equal Commitment to the Group Effort

Willey, K

Wandel, A

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Publisher:: Engineers Australia
Publication Type:: Conference Proceeding
Citation:: Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Conference for the Australasian Association for Engineering Education (AAEE2011) - Developing Engineers for Social Justice: Community Involvement, Ethics & Sustainability, 2011, pp. 557 - 562
Issue Date:: 2011-01

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Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Willey, K https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1478-0346	en_US
dc.contributor.author	Wandel, A	en_US
dc.contributor.editor	Al-Abdeli, YM	en_US
dc.contributor.editor	Lindsay, E	en_US
dc.date	2011-12-05	en_US
dc.date.issued	2011-01	en_US
dc.identifier.citation	Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Conference for the Australasian Association for Engineering Education (AAEE2011) - Developing Engineers for Social Justice: Community Involvement, Ethics & Sustainability, 2011, pp. 557 - 562	en_US
dc.identifier.isbn	9780858259980	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/31266
dc.description.abstract	An important graduate attribute is the ability to work in teams, so many university courses incorporate this as part of the learning experience. However, it is inevitable that in some teams there will be members who do not contribute as much to the overall effort as others, leading to frustration in those members who carry the majority of the burden. When there are students enrolled in distance-education mode, this can be exacerbated because many of the teams cannot meet face-to-face, so it can be difficult to exert sufficient influence to force problematic individuals to amend their behaviour. In an effort to mitigate against this problem, self and peer assessment was used for both team assignments in a Problem-Based Learning (PBL) course and the results of the peer assessment were used to scale the team mark for the corresponding assignment to obtain individual grades. After submitting their final assignment, a survey instrument was used to investigate the success of this process. The students overwhelmingly supported the idea of distributing marks based on the value of the individualâs contribution because in many teams it had the desired effect of motivating underperforming members to involve themselves more in the second assignment. There was some dissatisfaction about the process used to distribute marks, which the authors will attempt to address by providing better scaffolding in subsequent uses of the software tool. Regardless of these difficulties, we found that a transparent mechanism for distributing team marks to individual grades is beneficial for encouraging equal commitment to the team effort by all team members.	en_US
dc.publisher	Engineers Australia	en_US
dc.relation.ispartof	Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Conference for the Australasian Association for Engineering Education (AAEE2011) - Developing Engineers for Social Justice: Community Involvement, Ethics & Sustainability	en_US
dc.relation.ispartof	AAEE - Annual Conference of Australasian Association for Engineering Education	en_US
dc.title	Peer Review of Teamwork for Encouraging Equal Commitment to the Group Effort	en_US
dc.type	Conference Proceeding
utslib.location	Australia	en_US
utslib.location.activity	Fremantle, WA	en_US
utslib.for	0999 Other Engineering	en_US
dc.location.activity	Fremantle, WA
pubs.embargo.period	Not known	en_US
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology/School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Strength - CRIN - Realtime Information Networks
utslib.copyright.status	closed_access
pubs.consider-herdc	true	en_US
pubs.finish-date	2011-12-08	en_US
pubs.place-of-publication	Australia	en_US
pubs.start-date	2011-12-05	en_US

Abstract:

An important graduate attribute is the ability to work in teams, so many university courses incorporate this as part of the learning experience. However, it is inevitable that in some teams there will be members who do not contribute as much to the overall effort as others, leading to frustration in those members who carry the majority of the burden. When there are students enrolled in distance-education mode, this can be exacerbated because many of the teams cannot meet face-to-face, so it can be difficult to exert sufficient influence to force problematic individuals to amend their behaviour. In an effort to mitigate against this problem, self and peer assessment was used for both team assignments in a Problem-Based Learning (PBL) course and the results of the peer assessment were used to scale the team mark for the corresponding assignment to obtain individual grades. After submitting their final assignment, a survey instrument was used to investigate the success of this process. The students overwhelmingly supported the idea of distributing marks based on the value of the individualâs contribution because in many teams it had the desired effect of motivating underperforming members to involve themselves more in the second assignment. There was some dissatisfaction about the process used to distribute marks, which the authors will attempt to address by providing better scaffolding in subsequent uses of the software tool. Regardless of these difficulties, we found that a transparent mechanism for distributing team marks to individual grades is beneficial for encouraging equal commitment to the team effort by all team members.

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http://hdl.handle.net/10453/31266