Large-scale collaborations can engage students over a span of weeks and in ways that no day-to-day lesson ever can.

Whenever it’s time for my students to begin a collaborative project, the classroom transforms: students who rarely speak become chatterboxes and group leaders; talkative students learn to compromise and incorporate other ideas and voices.

Sure, there are those students who began the class uncommitted and stay that way, even during a collaborative project, but those students make up maybe 1% of all of my students. The rest inevitably rave about the chance to work and create with their classmates.

But these types of projects can go incredibly wrong if, as instructors, we fail to keep one key thing in mind: making the students hold each other accountable. So how do we do that?

The quickest and easiest way an educator can compel students to become responsible for each other? Let the students grade each other!

Students relish this because they rarely get to exercise control over “teacherly” tasks like grading. I find that once they receive the power to grade, they treat that power with great care.

Plus, letting students grade each other shifts some of the responsibility for grading (and holding students accountable) away from the instructor, so that this responsibility can be shared with the class. This creates less stress for the educator and generates more time for the educator to guide students in both the project and how to assess their work.

I see the instructor as the person who provides the framework for grading, which can change depending on a project’s outcomes.

This formula gives greater value to your score, which helps assure students that your perspective - as the professional - still holds more weight over a class of learners.

Sometimes though, a class might already be quite advanced in terms of assessing a project. In that case, you could consider just adding your score in as part of the class average so everyone’s perspective in the audience holds equal weight.

1. Audience Evaluation: If a project’s outcome entails some type of final group presentation or performance, then the whole class can score (except the group’s performers/presenters, for obvious reasons). You can present to the class, at the beginning of the project, a simple formula, like this one:

Option A: Outcome = Group Presentation or Performance

(Average Class Score + Instructor Score)/2 = Group Score

2. Group Evaluation: At the end of the project, you can also ask each group member to evaluate their own members through a rubric/score sheet like this one.

There are several ways an instructor can use these individual scores. They can serve as a simple device to help group members stay committed to the group, especially if they already know that their own group members will be evaluating them at the end of the project. Often, just the prospect that your team members will evaluate you is enough to ensure that team members remain committed to the project from beginning to end.

Or you could use the scores more mathematically. Let’s say a group is composed of 5 people or more. If the majority of the scores for a student falls below your established baseline for “passing” participation, you could just deduct a set number of points that you’re comfortable with, from that individual student’s overall project score. That way an underperforming student is more likely to receive a grade that matches that student’s actual effort, and overachieving students will feel less disgruntled if a team member has been coasting on everyone else’s efforts.

You can also reward students who group members feel go above and beyond. If those students’ score averages well above their peers, you can add extra points to those students’ group presentation/performance score.

You can also use these individual scores as another score to average into their group grade, using a formula like this:

I mostly teach academic writing, so I often don’t require a class performance or presentation as the final outcome since presentation/performance skills aren’t part of the course’s objectives or standards. In this type of situation, oftentimes, I only ask for a group script or report as the final assignment.

In such a case, it can make sense just to fall back on individual scoring of and by group members, as outlined in Option A, Step #2, above. That average individual score then becomes that student’s grade for the group project.

Option B: Outcome = Group Script or Report (without a class performance or presentation)

You might wonder: why not just give all the students in the same group, the same grade for a group project?

I'm not against this, and I've definitely used this tactic to get students to take collaboration seriously. However, I find that students really value fairness. They want the scores a group member receives to reflect the actual work that the group member completes.

So going through all these steps to generate a score that's both group-ish and individual-ish helps ensure that students get to exercise their full grading power.

Individualizing scores is a tool they can use to deal with freeloaders in the group - the biggest fear for most students who have to contend with group work. It's also a way to induce less committed students to contribute to the group more, so that they don't walk away with a really low score from their peers.