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THE PRO AND CONS OF GROUP WORK ASSESSMENT IN PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS
introduced by group marks as the students would have opportunities to exhibit their potentials through individual performance. Additional measures of appropriating a fraction of the overall group assessment weight to self and / or peer evaluation in terms of contribution to the group task could also be useful in addressing the cons of group assessments( Parsons and Drew, 1996; Mellor, 2009). The recommended analytical approaches coupled to highend support and effective facilitation by the teaching staff seems to be the way forward to enhance performance, reduce marking bias and encourage effective participation.
1. Clever’ students do not get sufficient credit for their work. 2. Unequal contributions from team members unfairly affect grades. 3. Lazy students can‘ hide’ from staff members. 4. Group work slows down the learning process due to unproductive time, e. g. meetings. 5. Group work impacts on other work due to the extra demands on student time. 6. Group composition unfairly affects one group over another, e. g. skills make-up, personality clashes.
Table 1. Myths of group work providing an impediment to choosing it as an approach( After Healey et al.( 1996), Parsons and Drew( 1996) and Livingston( 2000)).