REQUIRED: Individual Team Member Evaluations

Each student is required to evaluate each other member of their team on a scale of A to F, according to the rubric described below.  Your evaluation is due by Friday, August 24th, at 12:00 PM (noon).  

FAILURE TO PROVIDE A GRADE FOR EACH OF YOUR TEAM MEMBERS BY THE DEADLINE ABOVE WILL RESULT IN AN "F" BEING ASSIGNED FOR YOUR PORTION OF THE STUDENT-ASSIGNED GRADE. AN “F” FOR YOUR PORTION OF THE PEER EVALUATION WILL SEVERELY IMPACT YOUR OWN FINAL GRADE, LIKELY CAUSING YOU TO FAIL THE COURSE.

For example, if you are “Bob”, and there are two other students in your group, “Jennie” and “Tom”, YOU would send a SINGLE email DIRECTLY to mark@cs.uchicago.edu cc'ing jhadidianbaugher@gmail.com with your assessed grades of the two OTHER students in your group, such as:

*******

Jennie:    A-

Tom:        C+

Thanks, Bob
*******

In turn, Jennie would submit grades for you (Bob) and Tom, and Tom would submit grades for you (Bob) and Jennie.

ALL GRADES SUBMITTED BY STUDENTS OF THEIR PEERS WILL BE HELD CONFIDENTIAL AND WILL NOT BE ABLE TO BE "REVERSE ENGINEERED" TO DISCOVER IDENTITY OR INDIVIDUAL STUDENT ASSESSMENTS.

You may adjust the letters (A through F) with "pluses" (+) or "minuses" (-) for nuances, such as "A-" or "B+" etc. Make sure you identify yourself in the email.  You are free to add additional information, but just the raw grades of your teammates are all that is required.  You may feel free to grade as "hard" or "easy" as you like.

RUBRIC (these are just suggested guidelines):

A:  The individual attended all team meetings, was always helpful, creative, and worked hard throughout the entire quarter, helping significantly in the deliverables, his/her work was always excellent.  One might call this individual a "team leader".  A great joy to work with and you're thankful they were on your team.

B:  The individual attended most or all of the meetings, delivered work on time that was of good quality, was often helpful, creative, and worked hard throughout the quarter, supporting the team.  They were very helpful to have on your team.

C:  The individual attended perhaps most of the meetings, delivered generally (but not always) decent work, but something in the interaction was missing...perhaps the individual had other commitments that came before the team and its responsibilities, perhaps it was something else.  They were helpful to have on your team, but in the end did little to effectively contribute to the team’s final project success.

D:  The individual attended some or most of the meetings, but was sometimes, if not often, "away without leave", perhaps just not working as hard as you would have liked.  The work the individual delivered was sometimes OK, but other times sub-par, work that sometimes needed to be fixed or just disposed of.  Perhaps the attitude towards the deliverables was not quite where it should have been.  The individual, in the end, contributed rather little value to the resulting deliverables, and quite possibly negatively impacted the overall team’s final project.

F:  The individual contributed little or nothing to the team in terms of deliverables and was at times useless.  The team would have functioned just as well without them.  They might have even at times been detrimental.

GRADING EVALUATION:

The Grading Scale for the Peer Evaluation is as follows:

PEER EVALUATION GRADING SCALE
Letter Grade	Points/25
A+	26
A	25
A-	23
B+	21
B	19
B-	17
C+	15
C	13
C-	11
D+	9
D	7
D-	5
F	0

This scale evenly distributes points from 25 (for an A, 26 points for an A+) down to 5 (for a D-), subtracting 2 points for each “third of a grade”. As an example, suppose there are three peers on a team. If one peer assigns the student an “A”, this would be worth 25 points, looking across the row for the “A”. If the other peer assigns the same student a “B”, this would be worth 19 points, again looking across the row for the “B”. Averaged, that student would receive ((25+19)/2) points, or 22 points out of 25, for the peer evaluation.

This distribution is designed to offset the possibility that one or more students on a team causes the overall team’s project grade to suffer, despite the best efforts of the others on the team. Imagine that the same three peers are on the same project. Imagine also that Peers 1 and 2 work diligently and do a fabulous job, but Peer 3 drops the ball and essentially causes the project to fail, through lack of hard work, lack of caring, other some other negative impact. The project grade (that is the same for all three students) might be a 75. But actually, most of that poor grade falls on the shoulders of Peer 3. To offset this, imagine that Peer 1 assigns Peer 3 a grade of a B-, and Peer 2 assigns Peer 3 a grade of D. In this case, Peer 3 would receive ((17+7)/2) points, or 12 out of 25 points, for the peer evaluation.

As a further example, imagine the following peer grading scenario:

	Peer-Assigned Grades
Grades Assigned By:	Peer 1 Grades	Peer 2 Grades	Peer 3 Grades
Peer 1		B	A-
Peer 2	C+		A
Peer 3	D+	A

Peer 1 assigned a grade of B to Peer 2 and a grade of A- to Peer 3. Likewise, Peer 2 assigned a grade of C+ to Peer 1 and a grade of A to Peer 3. For some reason, Peer 1 must not have performed well on the project, because her peers gave her a C+ and a D+ for her particular effort and performance on the project.

In this case, using the grading scale above in yellow, the Peer Grades would fall out like this:

PEER EVALS	Peer 1	Peer 2	Peer 3
Letter Grades Assigned Peer A	C+	B	A-
Letter Grades Assigned Peer B	D+	A	A
NUMERIC GRADE ASSIGNED	12	22	24

Peer 3 would receive a 24/25 for his peer grade for excellent peer grades of an A and A-. Peer two would receive a 22/25 for good peer grades of a B and an A. Unfortunately, Peer 1 would receive only 12/25 points for their peer grades of a C+ and a D+. The higher averages for Peers 2 and 3 would go towards offsetting the negative project grade (by the faculty) of a 75 they will receive (along with Peer 1) because of Peer 1’s under-performance.

Please note that your own evaluation of your own performance is irrelevant in this rubric as you do not get to evaluate your own performance...only your peers do.