11 th Annual Conference and Convention  1999 Australasian Association Adelaide, Australia, 26-29 September, 1999 for Engineering Education Effectiveness of group-work assessment formula for final year projects Timothy L.J. Ferris School of Physics and Electronic Systems Engineering, University of South Australia ABSTRACT: An assessment formula addressing equity issues in final year group-work projects was presented in AAEE98. The formula appears formidable but its meaning and use are easier than it appears. The formula was used for the final year project subject in Electronic Engineering at University of South Australia in 1998. This paper discusses the results of formula use. Difficulties were found with certain anomalous situations, but in general the formula produced results matching the judgement of all assessors in the subject, based on their observation of the work of the students and partial assessments. 1 INTRODUCTION The University of South Australia electronic engineering course has several goals, common to other courses in the University and like goals of other courses elsewhere. Our concern in course design is to produce graduates equipped to be good engineers, able to practise all aspects of the discipline with high competence. We believe that good engineers are able to work with others as team members producing products bigger and greater than could any of the team members. We realise engineers often work in multi-disciplinary teams and that team members have different experience levels. Experience of this breadth is hard to give at undergraduate level because of the relative homogeneity of the students. Cross-disciplinary project groups including students from different courses are difficult to organise because of course constraints, both academic objectives and administrational. It is difficult to vertically integrate undergraduate and postgraduate students in common projects because of the different academic and calendar constraints, although undergraduate projects may beneficially be linked to postgraduate projects. In some cases projects may suit such complex arrangements but no general requirement can be made to demand such mixing of students. A manageable compromise is to require students within the same course to do project work as teams. We first implemented group-work final year projects in 1998. Most groups involved two students but some had three, four and one had six. Project magnitude was adjusted to suit the number of students. Groups could mix Honours and Pass candidates, who had different subject requirements. Some students worked alone, largely as a legacy of understandings agreed prior to the decision for group projects. These included students doing employer sponsored projects, in some cases doing academic formalisation of an assigned work task. The imposition of group-work, in subjects totalling 29% of the final year of the course and influencing award of Honours, has considerable implications for progress to higher degrees, or desirable employment. This led to consideration of how to fairly accommodate problems that arise in group-work. These problems include students dropping out, students giving disproportionate effort, and students of significantly different ability. This consideration led to the assessment processes and formula presented in [i]. This mark scheme was implemented in 1998, following university policy to inform students, in writing, of the assessment method in subject introduction materials. The information included the formula and the criteria used for each aspect. A spreadsheet implementing the formula was made and raw results were entered when received from the particular criterion assessor. 2 FORMULA AND ASSESSMENT The project is organised into a total of four subjects, with separate semester 1 and semester 2 sequences for Pass and Honours candidates. The project is conducted across two semesters, and the result is awarded at the end of the year as if a single, whole year, subject were attempted. This simplifies result interpretation for determination of Honours and external parties. Our Honours rules require a Credit or better in the project subject. This approach is justified because the