A New Strategy for Dealing With Social Loafers on the Group Project

Abstract

Professors often give members of a group project the same grade or they use peer evaluations to provide individualized grades. Unfortunately, both these methods have shortcomings. This article describes the segment manager method (SMM), a method for assigning individualized grades on the group project that does not rely on peer evaluations. A quasi-experiment is described where marketing research students are graded in groups either with peer evaluations (the control group) or with the SMM (the treatment group). Students participating in the quasi-experiment were more likely to prefer the SMM over the approach that uses peer evaluations. Moreover, when the SMM is compared with the peer evaluations approach, the SMM appears to be more likely to generate individualized grades on the group project that reflect each student’s academic ability, to deter social loafing, to increase scores on the group project, and to increase scores on an exam that is heavily loaded with project material. Recommendations for future users of the SMM are offered.