Assessing individual performance within team design and group problem-solving environments

Team design has become recognised as a dominant environment in which complex and innovative engineering designs are developed and resolved. Group problem solving techniques, such as problem-based learning (PBL) methods, are increasingly being adopted into engineering education to satisfy demands for relevance to this crucial aspect of professional design practice; however, customary assessment of group achievements, and allocation of group marks (equally) to individual members, not only fails to recognise each individual"s abilities in a significant skill field, it also causes dissatisfaction among students who want their own contributions recognised in individual marks. This dissatisfaction is an increasingly important issue for governments" quality assurance reviews. A significant obstacle to individual assessment in group and team environments has been lack of definition of individual attributes that contribute to affective group/team performance, and consequent lack of verifiable criteria for measurement of those attributes in individuals. This paper draws primarily on the authors" own research or with which the authors have been closely involved. That research, into dynamics of team design environments in industry, shows how individual performance can be defined in terms of differentiated assessment criteria, and how verifiable assessment of individual performance can be undertaken in an entirely transparent and convincing way that meets both quality assurance and student satisfaction, as well as relevance.