Instilling student responsibility with team contracts and peer evaluations

This chapter shares ideas about how to encourage students to take responsibility for their individual learning and their role as a team member through the use of team contracts and peer evaluations. We also share how instructors can more easily determine individual grades for team projects. Team contracts can help instill a sense of responsibility, encourage accountability, and add structure by promoting the clarification of task-specific roles. In conjunction with team contracts, peer evaluations can reinforce the responsibilities assigned through the contract. Peer evaluations provide an opportunity for students to objectively and thoughtfully evaluate team member contributions to the collective result and reward individual participants more equitably related to the outcome obtained.

The chapter provides discussion and examples of student-developed team contracts and a sample peer evaluation form along with a discussion of how these documents have been used in the classroom. Using responses from a convenience survey of undergraduate and graduate students, we conclude by examining student feedback to suggest patterns of the perceptions of students toward the use of these tools.