394/376 Elliott
Capstone Projects Class. Individual Assessment

• You must submit (a) an essay take-home assessment/exam, plus (b) a spreadsheet assessment of your group members. These comprise the important final elements of your project grade. The central theme is what you did to help your project group succeed, and typically follows your time log entries.

• There may be a wide variation in the scores of this assessment, which reflects your individual overall project grade averaged over all of the 800 points of project scores. E.g., assuming 800 project points total of which 200 are individual assessment point (this can vary from quarter to quarter), and 600 points shared by everyone, a student who did almost no work might end up eligible for 650 of the 800 project points (because of receiving 50 individual assessment points), whereas a student who did most of the work might end up eligible for all 800 points (because of receiving 200 individual assessment points).

• Complete your TWO PAGES OR LESS essays for themes one and two, where theme one is the most important. Put your name and group name at the top of your submission. Submit to D2L.

• Complete the customized .xls spreadsheet assessment (provided at D2L) of all your group members, following the instructions at D2L. Use File | Download | Microsoft Excel .xlsx to save to disk. Submit to D2L. Note: you can edit this file in Google Sheets. You MUST NOT alter the file structure in any way, including the names of group members. ONLY add an X next to your name in the provided column, your rankings 1-N and the points for each member.

• Submit both to D2L before the deadline. NO LATE SUBMISSIONS ACCEPTED FOR CREDIT. Once the D2L server closes, we stop accepting submissions.

• Make sure your time log is accessible through the group as a Google Document shared with the instructor and the course grader, or submitted as a .xlsx document. This is required.

• All your time log entries, as part of the group time log, must be frozen on the day the project manual is turned in.

• The case you make for the value of your contributions to the group project this quarter.

• The clarity of your time long and the self-evident contributions documented there.

• The ratings of your groupmates on the value of your contributions to the group project this quarter.

• The comments of your groupmates regarding the accuracy of your time log entries.

• Your correct execution of the ratings Google Sheets spreadsheet.

• The confidence I have that you reviewed the group time logs, and the work of your peers, and have a reasonable sense of how the group operated this quarter? Is it likely that you participated with the group and have a sense of what was going on with it?

• I reserve the right to give additional credit to group members who are exceptionally highly rated by their peers.

• In more extreme cases only (positive or negative), I reserve the right to add or subtract points for all group members based on the overall quality of the project. (This is very rare.)

• "I am a really good programmer and did great work for my group" ← is opinion.

• "I spent 18 hours writing back-end server code for the color-coded database entries as evidenced by my time log entries on 10-2, 10-4, and 105. The finished code is available on GitHub location XYZ." ← is based on fact.

Ranking instructions and points assignment:

1. N is the number of people in your group. The total points given is N * 50. So a group with 10 members has an N of 10 and a total points given of 500.

2. Rank the contribution* of each group member from 1 (most contribution) to N (least contribution), and write this in the first data column. You may NOT assign a duplicate rank—no ties.

3. Assign all 50N points to group members, according to their contribution (i.e., for an average of 50 points each). You may NOT assign a duplicate value—no ties. Points must follow the rankings, so if we sorted by rank and inverse sorted by points, the order would be the same. Note that you are being forced to choose group members over other group members, but that your vote, by itself, will have little affect if you assign similar points.

*You are to subjectively judge the abstract contribution made by each group member. Most often, the contributions will generally follow the amount of documented time spent. However, contributions can be of many kinds: In one example, someone might have written extremely complex code that you feel counts more than other contributions. In another (extreme) pair of examples, a group member that had excellent facilitation skills and really kept the group on target might be ranked number one, even though they spent little time on the project, did not write any code, and were not well-liked. Conversely, a person that spent twice as much time as anyone else, and wrote lots of code, but caused time-consuming problems for everyone else might, conceivably be ranked last. Most contributions will be straightforward: design, attendance at group meetings, writing code, rehearsing demos, designing the requirements, mastering the plan, editing the videos, preparing the documentation, etc. Popularity should rank low on your list of items to use in your assessment. Ask yourself, how much did this person help us to get the project designed, built, delivered, and demoed, on time? If your job were on the line, who would you want to be working with, based on your experience with them this time around?

An alternative, more quantitative worksheet mechanism is as follows: Review all the work performed by each group member (and include good-faith work that might, ultimately, not have made it into the project). Write down the number of adjusted hours it would reasonably take you to perform the tasks that they did. Sum up the total hours. Calculate a percentage by dividing each member's hours by the total hours. Multiply the percentage by the toal points for the group, to determine preliminary assignment of points. Use this as a quantitative guide for your final qualitative assignment of points. [Example: let there be a group with three members, A, B, and C. YOU assign hours for how long it would take you to do their work as A=100, B=60, C=40, for a total of 200 hours. A is at 50% (100/200), B is at 30% (60/200), C is at 20% (40/200). Total points is 150 (for a group of three members). A gets 75 points, and is ranked first (150 * 50% = 150 * 50/100 = 75), B gets 45 points and is ranked second (150 * 30/100); C gets 30 points and is ranked third (150 20/100).]

Keep in mind that even adjusted hours does not always translate into contribution, as discussed above. For example, a skilled and dedicated project manager might well have kept the group on track, which required much thought, and took a large emotional/intellectual outlay, but not necessarily much time. How would this fit your scheme? Accordingly, you would want to adjust the "hours" to reflect contribution.

Groups should talk over time logs and give each member a chance to discuss their contribution. However, there should be NO group discussion of points assigned by, and for, individuals. This is private, and to be done alone, as fairly as possible.