ILMIY VA PROFESSIONAL TA’LIM JARAYONIDA MULOQOT, FAN VA MADANIYATLAR
INTEGRATSIYASI
298
Samarkand State Institute of Foreign Languages
PURPOSES, BENEFITS AND CHALLENGES OF GROUP WORK ASSESSMENT
Ismatova Makhzuna Shavkatovna
SamSIFL ,Senior teacher
Hilal Onat
ELT Instructor Hacettepe University
School of Foreign Languages
Ankara, Turkey
Abstract
: Group work assessment plays a crucial role in academic processes, aiming to
enhance teamwork skills, motivation, and knowledge co-construction. This article explores the
purposes, benefits, and challenges of assessing group work, emphasizing its impact on student
learning and employability. While group work can foster collaboration and critical thinking,
issues such as unequal contributions, cultural dynamics, and assessment fairness remain
significant concerns. The study highlights different perspectives on group assessment, including
the debate on its effectiveness in preparing students for the workplace. It also discusses
alternative strategies, such as individual grading within team-based learning, to balance
collaborative benefits with fair assessment. The role of tutors in designing, monitoring, and
reassessing group work is examined to ensure meaningful learning outcomes.
Keywords
: group work, assessment, higher education, teamwork, collaboration,
cooperative learning, employability, fairness, problem-based learning, student motivation.
Assessment plays an essential role in the academic processes and in the work undertaken
by students during their courses. Hence, the design and delivery of all aspects of assessment
practice needs to be “fit for purpose”, and subject to regular review.
Earl categorises assessment from three perspectives:
“assessment of learning”
,
“assessment for learning”
and
“assessment as learning”
[1,6]. When appraising students’ work
and awarding marks, tutors are assessing the learning that students are demonstrating in their
assessment (“assessment of learning”). In the design of assessment activity and in providing
‘formative’ feedback to students, tutors are using assessment to aid student’s learning
(“assessment for learning”). By giving thoughtful attention to assessment design and
implementation, tutors can enable students, through their own close involvement with
assessment, to come to have a better understanding of the subject being studied and of their own
learning, (“assessment as learning”). These different roles of assessment are explored and
illustrated in this Assessment Framework.
In the context of assessment, group work refers to a process that entails learners working
in a team (usually small) towards a common assignment on which they may be assessed jointly
and/or individually. There are a number of purposes that group work assessment might fulfil, for
example it is often argued that it can;
develop an understanding of team working and mirror skills used in employment.
increase student motivation, and there is growing evidence that suggests that developing positive
social relationships can effectively support retention and progression.
provide a forum for the co-construction of knowledge.
promote a more independent approach to learning and sense of responsibility.
provide opportunities to work on authentic/”real world” projects and in multidisciplinary
contexts.
On the practical side, group work may reduce the workload around assessing and
providing feedback to students. Possible advantages might be:
reduced time spent on marking.
a more manageable degree of tutor support required.
more timely support from student peers in the same team.
ILMIY VA PROFESSIONAL TA’LIM JARAYONIDA MULOQOT, FAN VA MADANIYATLAR
INTEGRATSIYASI
299
Samarkand State Institute of Foreign Languages
However, despite the perceived practical advantages positive outcomes are not always
inherent in group assignments. There are many studies that outline serious concerns that the
process can have inequitable outcomes, damage interpersonal interactions and undermine
learning and teaching [2, 10]. Many students have a very negative attitude towards this form of
assessment. This negativity is often linked to concerns about ‘freeloading’ which is a term which
Gunn defines (2007:6) as a student ‘seeming unengaged whilst others seem to be doing all of the
work.’ A survey of the literature referring to ‘free-loading’ or ‘free-riders’ shows that these
students are generally construed as lazy and as cheating the assessment system by gaining a
higher grade than that to which they are entitled. However there is also a literature which
suggests these students may sometimes be implicitly or explicitly excluded by other members of
the group and that this may be a particular issue for culturally diverse groups (Strauss and Alice
2007). He et al reported [3, 18] in their study international students who felt marginalised or
ignored in groupwork and that domestic students controlled the groupwork process. Given the
complex nature of group dynamics and the diversity of the student div there may be many
reasons why students might ‘seem’ to fit Gunn’s description.
Some students are sceptical about the appropriateness of groupwork assessment as
preparation for employment arguing that in the workplace employers focus on the individual and
not the team and that there is a structured hierarchy of authority in the workplace unlike in
student teams, making the way in which groupwork is carried out and evaluated very different [1,
25]. Drake et al argue similarly that teamwork and groupwork are different concepts and that
developing teamworking skills requires a specific emphasis on understanding group dynamics
and the cognitive and emotional processes that underpin teamwork [2, 38]. They describe a
module that is designed specifically to focus on the development of skills and understanding in
teamworking through specific facilitation and coaching. This they see this deliberate focus as
key to professional development/employability rather than the assessment of groupwork per se.
Although the assessment of group work is often claimed to be essential to engaging
students in cooperative learning, Pitt who considers group work assessment from the perspective
of game theory concludes that ‘under the tenets of the theory, students’ desires to receive the
highest individual grades are…at odds with cooperative learning.’ [2, 64] he suggests for
example that where students receive the same mark, a sensible strategy would be for the weaker
members to contribute less and also that factors such as ‘team work’ and ‘contribution to the
group’ are essentially impossible to assess fairly. The role of the tutor in designing and
monitoring the process and making appropriate interventions is therefore a complex one.
The use of group work assessment should be considered carefully in the context of the
module learning outcomes, the nature of the assessment task and the time available. A useful
question might be, "What is it, in terms of learning, that this form of assessment delivers over
and above that of individual assessment?" It may be preferable to promote the use of
collaborative learning through team work but focus grading on individual performance. This is
common in Problem Based Learning (PBL) activities whereby tasks are designed such that
students work co-operatively, sharing resources but are often assessed via individual written
work. See
http://www.aishe.org/readings/2005-2/chapter9.pdf
In this way by designing collaborative activities to underpin individual assessment the
advantages of team assignments can perhaps be realised without the need to resolve issues of
grading. In the current HE climate of ever increasing student numbers there is perhaps a danger
of group assessment becoming overused and the timing, extent and continuity of group work
throughout particular courses (single-subject or joint) needs to be coordinated.
Re-assessment of groupwork.
If a student or group of students fail a group work
assessment it can be problematic to provide a re-assessment opportunity. The regulations do
allow for an alternative reassessment instrument. This may be appropriate where the assessment
is group-based but the learning outcomes of the module do not make reference to group work. In
other words, if the module does not explicitly need to assess group working ability, then an
individual assessment is appropriate.
ILMIY VA PROFESSIONAL TA’LIM JARAYONIDA MULOQOT, FAN VA MADANIYATLAR
INTEGRATSIYASI
300
Samarkand State Institute of Foreign Languages
It is possible to create a group out of all the students who are referred, but it is often the
case that such a "sink group" has members who have really left and this is likely to be a
problematic option. An alternative could be to ask the student to provide a reflection of what
went wrong in the original assignment and what the student could have done in order to improve
performance.
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