Evaluation questions in Buddycheck (Original)
Buddycheck allows you to create 4 types of questions:
- Peer questions – where each student rates each group member, including themself, individually
- Likert questions, where each individual’s performance is rated by other group members against a variety of criteria on Likert- style scales 1-3, 1-5 (default) and 1-9)
- points division - where each student has to divide a number of points (100 - default) between group members to reflect their contributions to the project against each of the selected criteria
- Group questions – where each student rates the group as a whole
- Open questions - where group members provide a general response to questions about the teamwork or the project
- Peer messages - individual messages to each of the team members.
What are you assessing?
Knowing what questions to ask is critical. What is it you wish to evaluate in the group work process? You need to establish what group working skills, attitudes and behaviours are important and you expect to be displayed to know what questions you need to ask. Make sure these criteria and the standards are observable and measurable to the group members.
While many of these criteria are common to all group work situations, there may be some questions you wish to include that will help your students learn what is most valuable to your discipline and what that looks like. Race (2001), described this as What constitutes a ‘“good” attempt and what makes it a “good” attempt. These qualities will be reinforced from the time each student spends reflecting on:
- their own performance and contribution
- their teammates’ performance and contribution
- the feedback they receive from other group members for their own collaborative impact on the group.
Likert or Divided points?
Likert questions are recommended as a default. They focus on group member achievements against standards rather than scores between students.
Division of points is a strategy used to have each team member make a judgement about the performance or contribution of each team member compared to other team members. It could be set up as just one question for a single category, or a number of different categories could be assessed, each with its own question or questions.
If your goal is to also provide your students with improved feedback about their teamwork skills, the Likert questions are a better choice and recommended in particular, for formative peer assessment. The Points division method of assessing student performance and contribution does not provide the individual with as much information about which behaviours are important in group work and therefore is less informative for teaching the essential skills. Nor does it provide the student with specific feedback on how they can improve (Ohland et al., 2012).