Nowadays many high schools and universities require students to work on projects in groups, and all members of the group receive the same grade (mark) on the project.

Nowadays many high schools and universities require students to work on projects in groups, and all members of the group receive the same grade (mark) on the project. Do you agree or disagree that giving every member of a group the same grade is a good way to evaluate students?

It is hard to deny that it’s unfair to give the same grade to every student on a project in high schools and universities when they make a different effort in the project, and such a fact leads impressionable people to generate the opinion that all members of the group shouldn’t receive the same grade. However, such a statement suffers from both logical and factual fallacies, and it should be examined meticulously. As far as teamwork and efficiency are concerned, I strongly hold that professors should absolutely give every member of a group the same grade.

First and foremost, working on projects in groups is a method to cultivate the spirit of teamwork at the universities and high schools. If professors give different grades to every member of the group, the students will not work as a team, instead, they will have different ideas on how to finish the project more perfectly because they all want to get a higher grade. Besides, if a professor wants to evaluate students’ abilities, he can organize an exam or make students writing papers, and he doesn’t have to assign a project that requires students to work in groups.

Furthermore, the fact that giving every member different grades reduces the efficiency of a team indicates that professors should give them the same grade. Take the case of my university. We had many projects at university, which require us to prepare and do presentations on the same topic. We do the projects in the group, and some of the members do the research on the Internet and one of them makes the presentation in front of the whole class and the teachers. The student who makes the presentation will often get a high grade, so we always spent a lot of time deciding who makes the presentation. As a result, we had little time to do the research and prepare for the presentation. Had it not been for the strategy of grading the professors use, we would never waste time doing the meaningless choice.