The Game of Rating your Peers

I recently finished a class project which, like many group projects in graduate school, we were asked to rate our fellow group member's contributions to the final project. These numbers would be used to determine members in a group members' grades in that group. For the first time in a group, my group decided beforehand that everyone would rate each person in the group equally. We all made a promise to each other to make a more beneficial outcome for all parties. I liked this idea, coming from a military background in which I was used to working in a team. I knew that a team worked better if everyone was working for the good of the entire team instead of for themselves. Instead of fighting over how big each others' pieces of the pie were, we were all working toward growing the pie. We grew a very large pie and had a great group presentation! When it came to rate the other group members I went to write in each person equally, but then I saw something on the rating form that I had never seen before, we were asked to rate ourselves as well as everyone else in the group. I thought, 'What is there to stop my fellow group members from rating themselves higher than everyone else, knowing that all of the other ratings would be the same, giving them the clear advantage as leader of the group project, deserving of a majority of the points. No one had come up with any threats to try to deter members from deviating from the plan." I also learned integrity while in the Army so I did what I said I was going to do, rate everyone in the group the same; however, I thought, 'If I did this next time I would find a way to make sure members didn't deviate from the agreed collusion."

My first thought was to ask my other group members to see their ratings before handing them in. This would give transparency which would deter members from cheating There also could have been some form of punishment. We could have written a contract beforehand stating if any group member deviated there would be a quick response rule like everyone else in the group would rate them the lowest. As I walked to turn in my group rating without having any of these measures set in place I thought to myself, 'Here's to trust! I'm glad that presentation is done with...'