How Can Instructors Ensure a Fair and Equitable Allocation of Grades and Rewards in Team Projects?

This Panel is born out of prior discussions at the last MOBTS 2025 which was held at Purdue Fort Wayne. During that session, participants together identified the need to ensure equity and fairness in teamwork and team projects. Questions arose as to how to ensure that each student in a team receives a fair grade or reward based on his/her individual contribution to team projects. We argue that without professors being more involved in the internal group operations in their classes and having a clear idea of the individual contributions of students on team projects, it may be difficult for them to allocate grades and rewards in a fair and equitable manner. The issue of fairness becomes even more salient as students are often reluctant to call out non-performing team members /free riders on their teams. This activity is based on Goal Setting Theory (GST) provides a strong theoretical foundation for ensuring fair and equitable allocation of grades and rewards in team-based project which measures that performance expectation by team members meet clearly defined, challenging, and time-bound objectives embedded in the Work Breakdown Structure (Locke & Latham, 2002). In this activity, we adopt the concept of “the instructor as a project manager” to guide participants on how to ensure a fair and equitable allocation of grades in team projects