Group assessment weighting and assignment workload

As participant accounts show, the risk of conflict increased if assignments were group-assessed, especially when this assessment made up a large proportion of their mark. In these situations, disagreements in the discussion were more likely to turn into conflicts or be perceived as conflicts by the participants.

In her interview, Ivanka said that how the MGW was assessed definitely changed how she worked with and how she thinks of her group members.

147 Example 3.1a

I06 [Ivanka]: “… because you try to be as nice as you can to people you meet, when you're not working with them, so there is no conflict. But doing work when you know your marks are riding on it, you start to care, you start to mind every little thing, so being late, as I said, if we’re hanging out, it’s fine if you're late, if we’re doing work, it’s a conflict, that’s part of it… I’ve done a non-assessed assignment in Term 1, which was a group thing, it was a tiny thing, it was one meeting thing but somebody didn’t show up but because it’s not assessed, and because it’s not so big a deal, you're like it’s not very nice of them, but who cares? You know, so there is no conflict…”

She compared assessed work where “you start to care, you start to mind every little thing” with non-assessed work, where “it’s not so big a deal” (Example 3.1a). Ivanka gave an example of a situation where she did not mind a “little thing”; for example, on social occasions, someone being late was not important. When the MGW was not assessed, even when a group member missed the meeting, she considered the behaviour was “not nice…but who cares”. When the MGW was assessed, it made her pay more attention to the way group members behaved: simply “being late” constituted a source of conflict for her. Thus, whether or not a task was assessed changed her expectations and evaluations of her group members’ behaviour. Socialising with classmates and engaging in non-assessed and assessed MGW could be experienced by the same group of students over a very short period of time; for example, the same group of students would eat lunch together between classes, they would have a group discussion in class, and continue to work on an assessed group report for their module after class. Students who think like Ivanka likely hold different implicit standards of behaviour that are, however, not necessarily communicated explicitly to their group members. This means that some students might have the same attitudes and demonstrate the same behaviour on all three occasions without understanding the different consequences attached to the same behaviour in a slightly different context. If the different standards and expectations of group members are not communicated well, as in the group referred to in Example 11a, conflicts are likely to arise.

Example 3.1a shows that whether the MGW is assessed or not has an impact on how students choose to interact with group members. The next example shows that how many marks the MGW carries further affects how the participant deals with the interaction with group members:

148 Example 3.1b

I05 [Jaime]: “… from term one to term two, I think the stakes are just much higher and people are just under much, it’s more difficult and they’re under more pressure, and so I think term one versus term two, I think it’s a combination between like the pressure, getting to know people better, maybe getting to express yourself a bit more honestly. And then also we just had more group work in term two, and that was worth more. It was actually worth grades, worth marks, so that was a little bit more high stakes than, okay just do like a group presentation next week with like one slide. That’s not a big deal, but then suddenly it’s like yeah, a third of your final mark, so do it well.”

In Example 3.1b, Jaime compares her experience of different group projects: one a group presentation to which she only needed to contribute one PowerPoint slide, and another that was worth one third of her final module mark. When group assignments were “actually worth grades”, she experienced more conflict in MGW as the stakes were higher. She also observed that in Term 2, because students were now more familiar with each other, it could mean “getting to express yourself a bit more honestly”. This implies that students were being more direct in giving each other negative feedback. When some students became more direct, how the negative feedback was delivered, and how this “more honest” approach was perceived by its audience, also could become a source of conflict. In addition, the students not only faced a heavier workload in the second term, but the assignments in Term 2 were “more difficult” as Jamie described. This could mean that students found themselves in a situation where the MGW tasks became increasingly complex thus requiring more cooperation, while the time pressure and workload demands also increased. All these factors need to be taken into account in trying to understand the rising conflicts among group members. Jamie’s MGW experience (Example 3.1b) shows that it is not only the marks of the assignments that may have an impact on how seriously the students take the group interaction but also the point in the academic year when the assignments arise, the difficulty of the assignment itself, and the students’ own workload that can affect their MGW experience.