Group-Based Assessments to Improve the Job-Readiness: Comparison
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Group-based assessments have been recognized as one of the ways of developing work-ready attributes in project management graduates. This paper is aimed at exploring the best practices for improving the administration process of group-based assessments to make it fit for purpose. The study adopted a systematic literature review and 22 semi-structured interviews with project management academics in higher education. The study found that teams shousks should be small in size and formed by the faculty. Tasks should be basbased on a real-world context and be sufficiently challenging for students. The group should create a team charter to establish expectations and ground rules for group members. Group assessments should include team member peer evaluations and oral presentations to curb social loafing. Academics should be actively involved in giving regular feedback, training students about teamwork, and communicating their expectations to students. The studyresearch findings are useful to inform project management academics about the design and administration characteristics that need to be considered to achieve the ultimate purpose of group-based assessments in polishing the job-readiness attributes of project management graduates. 

  • assessment design
  • group-based assessments
  • team assessments
  • job-readiness
  • project management
  • higher education

1. Introduction

The Project Management Institute (PMI) reported that there will be a need for approximately 87.7 million people working on projects by 2027 [1]. The PMI also predicted a significant talent gap that could result in a potential worldwide loss in GDP of USD $207.9 billion through to 2027 [1], which means that education providers are likely to see an increase in the demand for project management courses [2].
Projects require the engagement of teams across geographical regions, commitment, and participation to deliver the projects within budget and quality and on time [3]. Effective teamwork is essential for meeting the cost, time, and quality requirements of projects [4]. Muzio et al. [5] evidenced that 90–95% project performance related issues can be attributed to the difficulties related to the communication, leadership, management, and teamwork of project professionals. Furthermore, project management comprises a wide range of roles and responsibilities. Therefore, efforts to make students well-equipped with the required skillset should be reflected in educational programs. Recently, the Project Management Institution (PMI) also updated the PMI triangle to reflect the appropriate skillset for project professionals. The sides of the PMI triangle now include ways of working (technical project management skills), power of skills (leadership), and business acumen (strategic and business management skills) [6]. However, the focus of most project management training, in the context of universities, has been on the technical skills deemed essential to achieve project success, that being primarily the iron triangle of time, cost and quality [7]. More and more organizations, however, are realizing that understanding, managing, and being able to work with the people who undertake project work are vital for project success [8]. University educators need to take these views on board and increase their efforts in improving the skills of students in all areas pertinent to project management practice, which includes soft skills, hard skills, and tacit and explicit knowledge [9].
In order to respond to project management employers’ demands, universities have adopted many approaches to developing graduates’ skills to improve their work-ready skills [10,11][10][11]. Group-based assessments are one of the ways of developing demanded skills (soft and hard skills) in graduates, if designed appropriately [12,13][12][13]. The inclusion of team-based approaches with real-life components embedded in the design has the potential to engage and motivate students [3]. To deal with the challenges which have emerged from project complexity, project management graduates require do not only technical skills, but they also should possess group and management skills. To develop people skills, universities around the world have incorporated the component of group assessments in the assessment design [14,15][14][15]. Recent research has also shown the significance of group-based assessment in project management education [2,3,16][2][3][16]. While group-based assessments have been the prominent focus of educators and researchers due to their ability to develop employability skills and lifelong learning, they are often introduced in a hurry and become not fit for the intended purpose [17].
Group-based assessments are comprised of the following two elements: product(s) and process. Effective group-based assessment should consider both the product and process of student learning [17]. Good practices of designing the product(s) and the process of group-based assessments have been researched in many disciplines including business, economics, medicine, and social work [12,13,18,19][12][13][18][19]. However, there is a dearth of research that explores the best practices in the context of project management discipline where working in a team is considered a must for project management graduates. Therefore, this research focuses on exploring the best practices to make the group-based assessment fit for purpose by focusing on both product(s) and process.

2. Theoretical Framework

This research is grounded on the socio-constructivist theory of collaborative learning developed by Lev Vygotsky (1978) [20]. The conceptual underpinnings of socio-constructivism as a learning theory in connection with group-based assessments are the foundation of this restudyearch. In the learning process based on a constructivist approach, students construct knowledge by interacting with other students [21]. Based on this theory, students are the center of the learning process, and they engage in the interactive discussion to construct the knowledge in comparison to lecturers and tutors transmitting information to them [22]. Student-centered learning design facilitates a constructivist learning environment [23]. This constructivist view of learning considers the learner as an active agent in the process of knowledge acquisition. It allows the co-construction of learning between learners [24]. Higher education institutions need to shift from instructivist to constructivist learning environments [23]. The rationale for adopting social constructivist teaching methods in higher education is to assist students to be actively engaged in the construction of their learning in practical experiences, alongside providing opportunities for students to develop their soft skills required to tackle complex circumstances with other actively engaged peers [25].
Vygotsky (1978) argues that knowledge acquisition takes place in a socio-cultural environment. He posits that students learn skills in collaboration with their peers through discussion and modelling of skills and knowledge. The interaction between the students at various stages of their learning journey creates a dynamic zone of knowledge creation and acquisition. This zone is called the zone of proximal development (ZPD) [20]. To provide a collaborative learning environment where students can acquire and share knowledge with their peers/instructors and construct learning collaboratively, the higher education institutions (HEIs) have adopted group-based assessments into their curriculum and assessment. During group work, students engage in deep learning through collaboration, discussion, dialogues, problem-solving, and interaction [26]. Vygotsky’s socio-constructivism theory is based on a learner-centered philosophy, and it emphasizes that learning takes place in a social and cultural context [20]. Group-based assessments can facilitate the social learning environment through engagement with teachers and peers and, thus, contributes to the development of knowledge. According to Vygotsky, peer interaction and collaboration are critical elements for cognitive development, problem-solving, and knowledge acquisition [27]. Well-designed group-based assessments improve students’ cognitive abilities, critical evaluation of the given task, the ability to work with others, mutual respect, and tolerance of others [28]. Hence, students develop problem-solving skills, improve their engagement in the discussion and enhance social skills if the group assessments are well designed and executed. In the 21st century, graduates must be equipped with these attributes to be able to perform in the ever-changing work environment. However, the effective design of such assessments requires academics’ attention to various aspects, such as group formation process, group size, task type, the inclusion of a team charter, and the opportunity to evaluate and reflect on their own and their peers’ contribution [29,30,31][29][30][31].
This research investigated the authentic design of group-based assessments in higher education to understand how educators work to develop the best pedagogical approaches to the implementation of group-based assessments. Only when group-based assessments are designed and implemented effectively can students be provided with a platform to interact with peers and facilitators and construct knowledge appropriately. A systematic literature review (SLR) was employed to identify existing best practices, as the literature contains a wealth of information on group-based assessments. However, what is lacking is a consensus on the design features of group-based assessments that are most effective. Therefore, project management academics who are involved in designing and administering group-based assessments were interviewed in order to identify if there was consistency in their good practices in group assessments, and to gather their opinion about the best practices derived from the SLR. 

3. PGrevious Studiesoup-Based Assessments in Higher Education

3.1. Skills Requirements in Project Management

The job of the project manager is demanding, complex, and varied, requiring the juggling of several issues concurrently [32]. Managing projects successfully, therefore, requires a mixture of skills including interpersonal ability, technical competencies, and cognitive aptitude, along with the capability to understand the situation and people and then dynamically integrate appropriate leadership behaviors [33]. Mantel Jr et al. [34] categorized project managers’ skills into the following six areas: communication, organizational, team building, leadership, coping, and technological skills. El-Sabaa [35] adds that the human skills of project managers have the greatest influence on project management practices.
Employers expect project management graduates to possess a combination of soft and disciplinary technical skills [36,37][36][37]. The importance of the soft and disciplinary technical skills of project managers is highlighted in job advertisements [36,37][36][37]. Chipulu, Neoh, Ojiako, and Williams [37] investigated 2306 project management job advertisements in Asian countries, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. Similarly, Ahsan, Ho, and Khan [36] investigated 762 job adverts in the Australian and New Zealand market. The results of both studies demonstrated that employers put more emphasis on soft and disciplinary technical skills than project management expertise.
Ahsan, Ho, and Khan [36] and Chipulu, Neoh, Ojiako, and Williams [37] stressed the requirement of soft skills of project managers along with disciplinary technical skills and project management hard skills in different industries. Greater weight was put on soft skills than industry-specific skills in the study of Chipulu, Neoh, Ojiako, and Williams [37]. Soft skills were more important than project management hard skills in the financial, business, engineering, construction, manufacturing, and the information and communications technology (ICT) sectors than in other industries, such as media and education [37]. The engineering, construction, and ICT industries stressed disciplinary technical skills and soft skills over project management hard skills [37], whereas disciplinary technical skills and soft skills along with project management hard skills were considered important in the construction, engineering, and health care sectors [36]. It is apparent from the literature that soft skills, disciplinary technical skills, and project management hard skills are paramount to different extents across different industries. Therefore, it shows that despite a difference in how important soft skills, disciplinary technical skills, and project management hard skills are, they are all important to some degree across all industries.

3.2. Group-Based Assessments in Higher Education

Group-based assessments have long been used in higher education across disciplines to respond to employers’ demand for the development of soft and technical skills in graduates [38,39,40][38][39][40]. In this restudyearch, a group-based assessment is defined as “a graded assessment requiring students to work collaboratively across multiple class periods and involving some time outside the normal class meeting” [41]. Group assessment allows students to work collaboratively in teams, a key skill for future employment [42]. Despite numerous benefits, educators and students experience challenges while working on a group-based assessment [43,44,45][43][44][45]. Free-riding and social loafing are the most frequently cited issues in the literature [30,43][30][43]. One challenge of group-based assessments is the difficulty in discerning the individual’s contribution to the group’s process during group work as well as discerning each individual’s knowledge within the group’s knowledge. In other words, academics are unsure about who in the group knows what, or contributed what [46]. Gammie and Matson [47] and Nordberg [48] argue that, in a group assessment, there is a chance that students will be awarded a higher grade at the expense of other students’ performance, or that students may receive a lower grade than what they are capable of because they worked with others who did not achieve. Van Aalst [49] also addresses this challenge and points out that when a group product is graded, it is difficult to address what an individual has learnt. This may be considered unfair by students.

4. Recommendations

Recommendation #1.
Group tasks should be challenging, authentic and based on real-life projects.
Consistent with the literature [68[50][51],69], the ouresearchers' findings indicate that students must be given training and support before engaging in group-based assessments. Johnson and Johnson [26] stated that “students who have never been taught how to work effectively with others cannot be expected to do so” (p. 146). To compound the issue, outhe researchers' findings also indicate that students are often not given proper training on how to work in a team before they are assigned to a team [70][52]. OuThe researchers' findings suggest that student training should include various aspects of teamwork, such as team roles, working in a team, communication skill courses, explanations about different learning styles, and team-building exercises, as well as how to respond to and resolve team conflicts [59][53]. In particular, ourthe findings suggest that students should be educated on conflict management, as team conflict is a frequent occurrence; however, conflict is not inevitable and it is not necessarily a negative occurrence [18]. The findings suggest that teaching teamwork to students is a critical component that needs to be considered in the administration of group-based assessments. Therefore, wthe researchers recommend the following:
Recommendation #2.
Formal training on how to work in a group should be provided to students to facilitate a smooth working process.
In line with some of the previous research [18[18][54],71], the ouresearchers' findings indicate that most academics recommend forming groups by way of teacher selection. Teacher-selected teams are encouraged to emulate a real-life project environment where graduates are unlikely to be given a chance to choose their team members [72][55]. Consistent with the extant literature, the findings indicate that if students are given choice to form their groups, they will form homogenous groups, which are largely criticized [73][56]. It is also evident in the literature that student-selected groups are unlikely to include the breadth of skills and diversity needed to complete the assigned task [73][56], and may suffer from groupthink issues [56][57]. The findings also suggest that students will choose to work with friends—the ‘cronyism’ referred to by Chapman et al. [74][58]—in which case the team does not experience or learn from the group development process. Furthermore, teacher-selected formation was appreciated in this research so that introverted or weaker students do not become subjected to disadvantage [73,75][56][59]. Therefore, wthe researchers recommend the following:
Recommendation #3.
Teachers should form groups in order to emulate a real-life project environment.
OuThe researchers' findings suggest a structured group formation process to develop a balanced team with fairly equivalent skill sets [18]. Although some academics in this research recommended a random formation process to replicate a real-life project environment, pedagogically, however, randomly assigned groups can lead to imbalances within the teams and discount important variables, such as gender and cultural differences [73][56]. The findings suggest that, when forming groups, teachers should incorporate cultural diversity as students learn about, and develop, cultural awareness due to the cultural diversity that exists in the modern workplace [76][60]. However, some students find it challenging to work in diverse and multicultural teams, which can result in a negative attitude toward teamwork [77][61]. OuThe researchers' findings reveal that students need to learn how to deal with diversity as people from different backgrounds work on projects. In addition to cultural diversity, gender diversity in teams was also encouraged. The Ourresearchers' findings indicate that gender diversity results in better learning experiences [78][62] and stimulates new ideas and perspectives [79][63]. The findings also reveal that diversity in education leads to a better learning experience [80][64] by contributing to students’ exposure to new ideas, and to the development of comprehensive and creative projects [81][65]. Therefore, wthe researchers recommend the following:
Recommendation #4.
Teachers should aim to balance the group formation with diversity that represents a range of skillsets, cultures, genders, and academic backgrounds where possible.
OuThe researchers' findings indicate that group size is dependent on the nature, size and complexity of the task [18,82][18][66]. Ideally, a group should be small enough to allow all members to participate yet large enough that the total workload is not overwhelming [18]. When investigated further, an optimal group size range suggests that between three and five members is recommended for a typical group assessment [83][67]. In regard to specific group size, North et al. [84][68] and Lowry et al. [85][69] both reported positive outcomes for groups of three. The findings strongly suggest, in alignment with the literature, that larger group size increased the chance of social loafing and made it difficult to identify individuals’ participation and contribution [86][70]. In addition to group size, outhe researchers' findings also indicate that groups with an even number (four members) can create cohorts within the cohort. The findings also suggest that groups should not be formed with just two members, as it does not foster team development, as the two may break the task into sections, which results in no teamwork taking place. The same can also happen in cases of team breakdown. The existing literature did not offer any support for these findings. Therefore, wethe researchers recommend the following:
Recommendation #5.
Where the nature and type of the group task does not specify larger teams, students should be placed in groups of either three or five (avoid forming group with even numbers).
The findings in this research highlighted the importance of maintaining a team charter in order to improve the process of group-based assessments [29,59][29][53]. Team charters help to develop guidelines about the roles and expected contributions of team members [87][71], team functioning [29], and outline the goals and expectations of a team [88][72]. Hence, wthe researchers recommend the following:
Recommendation #6.
Groups should maintain a team charter with established ground rules, the expectation of team members, and guidelines.
This research’s findings indicated that a single mark should not be allocated to all students in a group if free-riding issues are present [65,89][73][74]. Giving the same mark for each individual is perceived as unfair, making hardworking students unhappy and resentful, while it also sends the wrong message to slackers [90][75]. The findings indicate that the majority of the academics implemented group members’ peer assessments in order to identify individual contributions and deter free-riding in group-based assessments [50,59][53][76]. The findings suggest that peer evaluation acts as a motivational factor to encourage students to engage in teamwork behaviors [91][77] and to provide information in order to adjust the individual marks accordingly [92][78]. Peer evaluations can increase a students’ sense of responsibility and promote team dynamics and learning within group work [65][73].
Recommendation #7.
Peer assessments should be incorporated into the group assessment process to deter free-riding and the perception of unfair marking.
OuThe researchers' findings also indicated that in addition to group members’ peer evaluation, oral presentation (one of the products) on the given task has the potential to identify any non-contributor(s). During the presentation, students are required to outline their aspect of the task in front of the academic to facilitate the identification of student’s contribution during that process. However, the existing literature does not provide evidence to support this finding.
Recommendation #8.
Students’ oral presentations on a given task(s) can be one of the ways of identifying potential free-riders in teams.
While group members’ peer assessments are used to moderate individual marks in group assessments, outhe researchers' findings indicate that marks of students should only be adjusted in extreme case scenarios when a team member did not contribute at all [93][79]. The aim should not be to introduce radical changes to marks but to moderate them within preset limits around the tutor-given mark [93][79].
Recommendation #9.
Adjust the marks of an individual only in an extreme case when there was no contribution at all.
OuThe researchers' findings suggest that academics should be involved in the process of group-based assessments. Academics can help students in many ways, such as arranging consultation [59[53][80],94], improving intra-group dynamics [51[78][81],92], motivating the students to achieve the goals of the project [17], and promoting a fair distribution of work and fairness in grading [95][82]. Academics’ involvement helps to distinguish between actual loafers and strugglers and, therefore, allows individuals to take preventive measures to avoid destructive impacts on the team [96][83]. To compound this problem, Forsell et al. [97][84] found that, in the main, teachers are absent from the group work assessment process, thus, leaving the problem in the hands of the students to solve. Therefore, the weresearchers recommend the following:
Recommendation #10.
Academics’ involvement throughout the process of group-based assessments must be maintained.

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