A Weighting Factor as A Tool To Adjust the Student’s Grades: Web Development Project as A Case Study
Sana Alyaseri
Sana Alyaseri, ICT Department, Animation College/AMES IT Academy, Auckland, New Zealand,
Manuscript received on July 01, 2016. | Revised Version Manuscript Received on July 14, 2016. | Manuscript published on July 20, 2016. | PP:4-9 | Volume-2 Issue-2, December 2016.
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© The Authors. Published by Lattice Science Publication (LSP). This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Abstract: Group project is one of the most common assessment methods used in New Zealand Private Tertiary Establishments (PTEs). Group work is considered as a purposeful and valued learning approach as it enriches the experiential learning of group dynamic. However, for the possibility of student satisfaction and positive learning outcomes with group activities to be significantly improved certain points need to be achieved; effective group project processes are utilised, clear assessment instructions are developed and communicated, and valid and fair grading is employed for the project processes. On the other hand, if students cannot see the point of group projects or they are unsure of what is expected of them or think the assessment methods are invalid or the grading system is unfair; the educational benefits are reduced and tensions can emerge. In fact, the way in which students engage in a group project is mainly determined by the way in which they are to be assessed. For example, since not all group members have the same contribution, the students feel that giving the same mark to all members is unfair. As a result, some tertiary educators use a strategy called ‘peer and self-assessment’ as a method of determining how group marks are to be distributed among individuals [1]. This paper provides an approach to calculate the peer review points and adjust the individual grades. The proposed approach is called the weighting factor (Wf) that represents how much the contribution percentage is for each member of the group
Keywords: Group project, Self and peer review, student assessment, Teamwork.