The Situation
   Suppose you are teaching research design skills and want to assess them. You could 
   have each student design a research project, but in large science classes the resulting 
   grading load could be severe. You could have them design in teams, cutting down on 
   the number of projects, but then it’s no longer possible to evaluate the skills of an 
   individual on that team. You could have students evaluate an existing research design, 
   and then assess their skills based on what they say in the evaluation. Unfortunately, if 
   the research methods were professionally developed, students may not be skilled 
   enough to critique them. 
   But you could have them evaluate research designs created by other students...
   Overview
   The basic idea behind this Assignment is that students work in teams to develop 
   (rapidly, and in-class) a research plan or methods statement for how they might 
   address a research question that you have posed. 
   Then, writing singly, each student evaluates another team’s drafted design, focusing 
   on criteria that you have selected. We recommend assigning the evaluations so that 
   each student within a group evaluates a different team’s project. Those evaluations 
   are submitted as Artifacts for assessment.
   When the students return to class, you can then have students assemble into new 
   groups based on which designs they reviewed. (Example: Everyone who evaluated 
   Team 1’s design gathers to compare notes. This is henceforth referred to as the 
   “review group.”) The review group reaches a consensus about what its target design 
   team should do differently. The best review team should also have a chance at extra 
   credit.
   The design teams then reassemble to review their feedback. They may revise based 
   on what they read. 
   Grading the Assignment
   The Assignment described on the previous page is designed to spare the faculty from 
   a lot of grading. Though it does consume class-time as a trade-off, the time spent is 
   likely to be pedagogically worthwhile, as long as your goal is to teach research design 
   skills. 
   How the sequence is graded:
   The design group stage: As credit/no-credit participation in an in-class activity. 
   The individual evaluation stage: Completed individual evaluations are required to 
     participate in the review groups and recorded (credit/no-credit) as homework.
   The review team stage: As participation in an in-class activity. The team that writes 
     the best review earns a small amount of extra credit.
   The (optional) revision stage: The team with the best research design earns a small 
     amount of extra credit. By discussing your reasons for picking one project over 
     the others, you “close the loop” on the sequence. 
   Building the Assignment
   The slides that follow describe, in steps, how to build such an assignment. 
    Step 1: Find Your Criteria