Remarks: Again, I can't type in Chinese at the moment, sorry! And thanks Siu Hang for his help on translation! (P.S. It doesn't mean I don't know Chinese, for yor information.)
And, even though possibly no one is interested in this article, I am obliged to finish the whole story as I have started it......
(......Then, the 'smart students' go to the others to warn them not to give low marks, otherwise they would do the same in revenge.)
From this point onwards, some 'less aggresive' students would just follow these 'warnings', while the other hard working students couldn't stand it anymore. It's time to start my friend's story.
Mag (alias) is a demanding girl, she works very hard to make sure that all her assignments and work are 'perfect', or perhaps I should say she is a total perfectionist. She worked in a group of eight for a big project, which itself is the assessment and the theme of that module. With her group, she had more than three quarters of the total workload. Only two other group members actually take their responsibilities to finish 'their part' of tasks. Mag was of course the group leader of this project, and she couldn't tolerate it anymore, when she first confronted the others. I have to admit that, she really had bad temper especially when she believed she was right. or such a big project, there were surely more than one peer evaulations, and she gave zero marks to the most uncoorperative group mates towards the end of the first month (the whole project lasts about four months only), when they did the second or third peer evaluation. The teacher in charge held a meeting with them, as usual, and the conflict between the two camps has become visible. They tried to attack her in many ways (mainly non-physical), and she didn't give way, as expected, and the 'lazy camp' started threating to give her low marks. SHE was only one person, which represented only one seventh of the marks given to the others; while THEY had three, four gangsters, which summed up to nearly half of her marks, the winning side of this battle was predictable. One important point to note here; this module was a core module, which had to be passed for promotion to the following year, and the passing mark in our school was 40, while for this project it was nearly impossible to get an A (70 marks or above). So, they sucessfully failed Mag, which was a shock to the whole management, as this had never happened before. After countless meetings, with Mag, with the whole group, between the teacher and the management, amongst the management themselves, they have decided to let Mag promote to the next year exceptionally, as she has practically finished that heavy project on her own! Condition was, she had to re-take that module in her next year of study. After that, the school has implemented a new policy for group work, which most groups were no longer self-selected to minimise the risk of the same thing happening again. Anyway, this case has alarmed the school, but was not yet the end of the story.
At nearly the same time, I was facing the same dilemma, in an even worse situation. In a pair work, my partner helped only in the first section of the project. It was an interview exercise, the first part was the interview, and the second part was the report. She hadn't written one single word in the report, but tried very hard to please me in the whole process, including coming over with some biscuits to 'comfort' me when I was working hard late at night for OUR ASSIGNMENT. Finally, her request poped out, which was to fill in the forms and hand them in together. I did that. So both of us gave each other full marks. Not very coincidentally, she was one of the group members in Mag's group. Right after I heard about what had happened, I went to the teacher to take back my peer evaluation form and handed in a new one, which marked fifteen marks out of twenty-five. When the result was released, she protested to the teacher on her results, and started spreading bad words of me, and even insulting, frightening me, forcing me to give her back her 'deserved full mark'. Frankly, I would have given her a higher mark if she had come to plead me instead of threatening me, or if she hand't treated Mag like that. Anyway, as the assignment was well written, she got a pass grade out of it, and she wasn't satisfied at all. After one final meeting between two teachers and us, she was so emotional that she nearly hit me if the teachers weren't there to stop her. My friends even said that I was too kind and simple that I didn't 'fall down' immediately once she touched me. At the end of the day, I didn't regret for the choice I have made on this.
After that problematic semester, the school seems to be much more careful of the use of this peer evaluation system, and for most of the degree semester course work, peer evaluation was not even practised since the school has been aware of the importance of all our grades in final year, and has started seeking solutions on improving this system. In fact, throughout the school, 'slight threatening' and 'imaginary revenges' are still very common, for the former, 'filling in the forms together' has still been the easiest solution, while for the latter, the lazy students always give low marks to the ones who did most of the work as a 'prevention' of getting low marks alone, kind of a revenge. Even more ironic, sometimes they gave lower marks to those who actually worked in the project then the marks they finally got.
For those who don't understand why I have been writing this rather personal little remark until here, I have to say that I feel quite powerless on the use of evaluations in schools. In fact, I have lost conficence in it already. I suppose it is a similar case about course evaluation in most universities, while you can't take it very seriously because we have all noticed the existence of some bad, unreasonable students, while we can't ignore its importance for the reason of the horrible, irresponsible teachers or tutors.
In addition to that, I really want to exclaim that group work is not a matter of joke! Who you are working with usually decides your grade obtained and efforts needed, as well as your life in school. Group assignments can make your life miserable if you meet some 'fantastic' group mates!