Group Project, Individual Marks
Four students complete a community garden project for their Stage 2 Community Studies folio. They present a joint 12-minute oral report and submit a shared folder of evidence. The teacher's task sheet says students will be assessed individually on their community interaction and reflection, but the group chose to divide the work by task: one student designed the beds, one negotiated with the council, one kept the budget, and one wrote most of the report. During the presentation, the report writer answers nearly every question. The other three contribute only when asked directly. The teacher must now assign individual grades from a shared product.
1. Identify the main assessment problem and explain how the teacher should gather evidence to make individual judgements.
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The central problem is that the shared product does not reveal individual capability. Because the group divided tasks, each student has strong evidence for one component and little for the others, and the oral report is dominated by one student. Awarding a single group mark would over-credit some students and under-credit others, and it would not match the task sheet's promise of individual assessment.
The teacher should gather supplementary individual evidence: a short individual reflection, a conference in which each student explains a decision outside their own task, and the group's own record of who did what. The teacher can also use observations made during the project, such as notes on who negotiated with the council and who managed the budget.
Where a student cannot demonstrate a required capability, the teacher should not infer it from a teammate's performance. The judgement should be built from what each student can show, with the group product treated as one source among several.
2. The report writer claims the group agreed she would speak for everyone, so her answers should count for all four. Evaluate this claim.
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The claim confuses group convenience with individual evidence. A group may agree on roles, but an assessment judgement about a student's oral communication must rest on that student's own communication. If the report writer's answers counted for everyone, the other three would receive a result for a capability they did not demonstrate, and the report writer would not receive separate credit for the extra work she did.
The teacher should acknowledge the agreed role and explain why it cannot transfer marks. The fair response is to give the other three a brief individual opportunity to respond to questions, or to use their written reflections and conferences as the evidence base, while the report writer's performance is credited to her alone.
If the group's arrangement made individual evidence impossible, the teacher should record that limitation and assess only what is evidenced, rather than guessing. This protects both the integrity of the result and the students' right to be judged on their own work.