An anonymous approach to group based assessment

Last year, a revolutionary new idea was presented at the CAA conference introducing VorteX, a collaboration tool that allows fairer grading of group based assessments through its monitoring of group work, and the presentation of statistical information. Since that time, further research has been carried out at Aberystwyth to improve the effectiveness of group-based assessments, and to ultimately improve students results and learning. Although VorteX has helped students collaborate and work as a team, it has become apparent that there are still several issues when working in a group. As soon as students are monitored, it appears that many of the standard issues of team-working are overcome, in particular the problem of students not putting in their fair share of the effort. What is difficult to overcome is the clash of personalities and biased preconceptions.