Assessing individual contributions to groupwork by a summary of tracked computer-supported collaborative activities

Inaccurate or imprecise assessment of individual contributions by the teacher in a collaborative learning environment leaves the free-riding students and non-collaborating student groups undetected because of lack of accountability. This discourages student collaboration and student learning. To accurately evaluate students´ contributions and to provide timely interventions, a teacher could use a summary of the tracked collaborative activities of the participating students. We have developed and deployed an individual contribution assessment method for the students collaborating in ClassroomWiki - a Web-based collaborative writing environment. Our contribution assessment method combines the (1) tracked useful textual contributions, (2) idea- and concept-related contributions, and (3) other contributions like peer-rating to generate a summary that assesses the members´ individual contributions toward their groups. To test the impact of our contribution assessment method, we have used it to assess the contributions of the students participating in a collaborative writing assignment in two separate university-level courses using the ClassroomWiki environment. The results of our two-semester long deployment suggest that, using this summary, a teacher can (1) better evaluate the individual contribution of a student and (2) provide timely and proactive interventions to the non-contributing members and groups to improve collaboration and performance in the ClassroomWiki collaborative writing environment.