A framework for assessing individuals who learn in a team environment

BACKGROUND Grading individual students in teams has always been problematic. To accurately gauge individual learning outcomes, students’ grades need to be based on what they have learned as an individual within the team context. However, within engineering team-based project-oriented subjects, individuals have traditionally been assigned a grade heavily influenced by the team’s project deliverables rather than their individual efforts. PURPOSE The aim of this project was to develop and pilot an assessment model which captures both technical/scientific knowledge as well as those higher order processes which are the hallmark of team-based project-oriented subjects – higher order processes such as design thinking, communication, and teamwork. DESIGN/METHOD In this project, researchers from five tertiary institutions investigated current practices for assessing individual student learning in team-based undergraduate engineering coursework and from this investigation constructed a strategic framework which effectively assessed individual student learning in the team context. This framework was then introduced to participants as a model, and a number of pilot trials of the model were conducted at the participant institutions. RESULTS Each phase of this multi-phase project revealed important information about the subjective and contextual factors affecting the design and implementation of processes for the effective assessment of individual students in team-based project-oriented classes. These findings emerged from many sources including research team discussions, formal analysis of interview transcripts, and anecdotes told by participants and colleagues during workshops, symposia, and informal conversations. The resulting model is composed of five processes which, when taken together, demonstrate the team’s understanding of the fundamental elements involved in the effective assessment of individual students in team-based learning environments.CONCLUSIONSThe findings to date suggest that each of the elements of the framework may have seemed straightforward to many engineering instructors when first described, but these instructors often lacked the ability to translate these elements into their teaching practice in concrete and constructive ways. While the assessment framework proved effective, a major finding of this project was a fundamental lack of knowledge in the pilot participants of this project regarding the functions and the affordances of learning outcomes in the engineering curriculum. Additionally the outcomes suggest that the team-based project-oriented learning environment itself presents a level of complexity in terms of assessment that surpasses the traditional lecture/tutorial format.