Dear kina-chan,
The principle I recommend is trying to create a situation that is similar to what students will experience in tworkplaces in which it is critical for members to be motivated to achieve team goals. Thus, I tell studets something like:
“In the workplace teams, when someone is gone, the team has to pick up the slack and the absent member still benefits from the team’s work. If the absent person has a good reason for being gone, explains the reason to the team, and does their best to be extra committed and supportive, most teams will gladly extend the benefit. If, however, members have doubts about the reason for the absence, feel like the member is trying to “freeload” or both, then the absence is likely to be a black mark that has a significant impact when the peer evaluations are completed at the end of the term. Thus, if you have to be absent, let your peers know in advance and make sure that you do your best to make up for it. Otherwise, you are putting yourself at risk.”
Then, I do one of two approaches. The one I like best is that I base a very small part of the team grade (5%) on attendance and automatically give them half of the points for keeping track of unknown absences (someone doesn’t show up and no one knows why), known absences and, tardys. I allow students to set grade “weights” for the class, In addition, I allow students to decide three things:
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How many tardies = one absence (if students—or workers—are late, ti causes problems for the team).
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Under what conditions an absent member will receive the team score.
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Under what conditions an absent member will be allowed to make up the individual test.
The other is simply announcing a policy that, if students miss a RAT or some other graded activity, I automatically give them the team score and also allow them the opportunity to take the individual test using one of two options. One is to take the test early so that I can let their team have access to their individual answers during the team test. The other option is to take the test later.
Some professors are uncomfortable with the idea of giving make-up tests. They worry that allowing some students to take a late exam will give them an unfair advantage over other students but see the task of creating comparable but different exams as extremely time-consuming. In my experience, neither of these has ever been a problem.
I do not create an alternative exam. If a student misses a RAT when it is given in class (and very few do), I leave a copy of the regular exam with the departmental secretary. Then, any student who needs to take a make-up RAT contacts her to make arrangements to take the exam in a nearby room. In the many years I have done this, the vast majority of students taking such make-up exams get scores that are lower than their average on the RATs they take at the normal time. This means I can simply use the same exam for the make-up exam, and doing so does not give students any significant, unfair advantage.
If allowing make-up RATs turns out to be too cumbersome, another option is to allow students to drop one individual RAT score. The disadvantage of this approach, and one that I personally feel is a really big one, is that it tends to eliminate the opportunity to reward students who are willing to put in the effort to be prepared on every test. In fact, I think dropping the lowest test is teaching students that it’s OK to slack off once in a while and I think that is a really bad message. In my judgment, one of the surest ways to gain respect is being 100% reliable and anything less quickly detracts from the degree to which you will have the respect of your peers.
Over the years, I had very few absences and students’ commitment to their teams was a far more powerful motivating force than their concern about getting a low peer evaluation score.
Larry