Remarks: I really want to type this essay in Chinese, but the NJ Star Comminucator doesn't work, sorry!
Have joined this column for ages already, yet never had time to write anything online (I have wriiten some rough work on paper, though). This is my first article in this column, hope you will enjoy it.
Have just read a few logs about 'evaluation in schools', which made me think of a lot of things......
However, the first thing I have thought of was not course evaluation, but something you may find strange, which is called 'peer evaluation'. Peer evaluation is a system used in our school to prevent the uneven distribution of workload between group members in all sorts of group projects or assignments.
Why I would think of it immediately? Just because both a good friend and myself have been sufferers in this system. Before I go further, I feel obliged to explain this system more clearly, so you have a basic concept of how it works, or how it doesn't.
For those studying, or studied in HK, you should have the experience of 'group work' either in primary, secondary schools or universities. Normally, in any group, there are some members who do more tasks and some who do less. That's what I call 'normal' because the cases I want to talk about is when things go wild. Some lazy group members would do nothing at all throughout the whole process until when (s)he gets the grade, which is the only thing (s)he would take part in this group. How to stop this from happening? No way! Until now, I still don't know how to prevent this situation. If who has any method, please let me know. So, our school gives each of us a 'peer evaluation form' to assess each other's performance for the group work. It sounds good, right? Wait, there is an assumption here, which is 'all students are fair'. That's true, if all students are fair, this system should work. And in fact, even without this system, all groups should work well! The problem is exactly here. Some students aren't fair! So, first of all, in your mind, you must think that all students give their friends full marks, but that is not such a big deal, as this only makes the evaluation system less meaningful, still, it doesn't hurt anybody.
Then, the real problem comes...... What if you get really low marks and you don't know who you have offended? Then some students think of one way to solve this mystery, 'filling in the forms together'. In this way, we are FORCED to give everybody else full marks, which is again, unfair, especially for the hard working students, as they have lost the ability to protect themselves a bit using this system. Until this stage, no protest so far. Finally, one student could not stand it and give low marks to the 'inert group members', so the whole war began......
The inert students complains to the teacher about the low marks, and the teacher involved called for a meeting with all group members to see what happened, then of course, led to nothing. As their situation alarms many others, everybody starts to worry about the marks they get, whether appropriate or not. Then, the 'smart students' go to the others to warn them not to give low marks, otherwise they would do the same in revenge.