Towards rational assessment of group projects in engineering higher education

Group projects based learning arrangements are common in higher education. Different practices are followed for assessment of individual contributions in group projects. Moreover, several such practices incorporate diverse arrangements for including peer and self assessments along with teacher assessments. An ongoing research by the authors aims at: (a) conducting a benchmarking study on such group project assessment frameworks and (b) thereby recommending rational arrangements for assessment of individual contributions in engineering higher education group projects. The research methods include knowledge-mining from literature reviews and lessons from case-studies in engineering higher education. The discussions in this paper include: (a) a basic overview of some assessment strategies; (b) a key summary from specific case-studies; and (c) a set of recommendations for rational assessment of group projects in engineering higher education.