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Detailed outline of OASIS paper

Intro
Group work beneficial but harmed by free rider problem
List benefits of group work
Free rider
Example
How Free riders harm students
Past attempts to address free riders
List methods
Propose OASIS to address free rider problem
OASIS key aspects
Describe study
Research questions/hypotheses
Participants
Pre-survey of free rider link to students’ view of group work
Free rider Pre-survey  OASIS  Free rider Post-survey
Benefit of study
Theory
Free rider
Definition
Refer to intro example
“a member of a group who obtains benefits from group membership but does not bear a
proportional share of the costs of providing the benefits.” (Albanese & Van Fleet, 1985)
rational person who is utility maximizing may free ride when he/she has a chance to take
advantages of the public goods provided by other members of the group because public goods
are not excludable and they can access such goods even if they have borne no costs.
Little individual contribution for equal, shared benefit from group
Causes
Maximize benefits while minimizing costs
More people
possibility of free riding increases along with the group size, as the more members a group has,
the less noticeable a particular member’s contribution would be. And this is called the
“Ringelmann effect”, first proposed by Ingham, et al. in 1974.
Groups with variance in abilities are vulnerable to free riding: low-ability members of the small
group tend to exploit the high-ability members. (Olson, 1965; Hall & Buzwell, 2013)
Effects
Sucker effect
One of the most observed impacts of free riding on group projects is the “sucker effect”, where
members who could have performed well are discouraged by the free riders and end up
producing less, leading to suboptimal group production. (Kerr & Bruun, 1983; Lee & Lim, 2012)
Teammates reduce effort  lower team performance
Assess Past attempts to address free riders
Other Individual activities
Improve assessment of individuals, hence useful
But does not necessarily reduce free rider problem
Design better task/problem
Intrinsically interesting task
Motivates students to work hard to find answer
But not all students might be interested in each task
Free riding problems can be reduced when the tasks are identifiable, or difficult, or unique.
(Harkins & Petty, 1982; Davies, 2009)
Assign task that individuals cannot do alone but group can do
= Vygotsky’s Zone of proximal development
Threat of failure can discipline team members to work hard, hence useful
from economics/market competition + theory of firm
Not easy to identify one suitable task for all groups
Too easy
No discipline effect
Too hard,
Teams are unsuccessful,
Might learn less,
possibly discouraged
even if teacher combines contributions from different groups into a solution for whole class
Assign role to each student
Rotate roles
Monitor and Intervene
Teacher intervention
Teacher can adapt to needs of each group
Teacher training
Not all teachers intervene effectively
Requires extensive teacher effort and monitoring
costly
Teammate intervention
Use peer pressure to entice teammate effort
Need other teammates’ cooperation
And/or threaten to reduce own effort
But self-destructive
possibly not credible
Free rider might resent teammate intervention
Teammates often lack skill to intervene
Need to train teammates
Little research on how to train teammates
High time cost
Randomly select a team member to present
Motivate all team members to
understand one another’s work
teach one another as needed
Improves teammate mastery, hence useful
But a few team members might still do most of the work, so this does not discourage free riders
Reward / incentive structure
Teacher assesses individual contributions
if many individual components
less benefit of group activity
If few individual components,
hard to assess individuals
Teammates assess each team member’s contributions
Gather info from students
Peer assessment is effective in enhancing group members’ performance. (Aggarwal & O’Brien,
2008; Murray & Boyd, 2015) Online peer assessment has gained great popularity in response to
the technology development. (Luxon-Reilly, 2009; Tollefson, 2015)
Timing is important for group assessment. (Brooks & Ammons, 2003) The group assessment
should be conducted at early stage (Druskat & Wolff, 1999) and for multiple times throughout
the whole project (Fiechtner & Davis, 1992).
Rewards and punishment systems are conducive to better individual performance. (Price,
Cosmides & Tooby, 2002; Balliet, Mulder & Van Lange, 2011) Incentives such as financial
incentives (Mason & Watts, 2010) and reputation (Davies, 2009) can serve as counterforces
against free riding.
Bias by social relationships
Higher scores to friends and lower scores to disliked groupmates
Students might not like assessing their classmates
Fear giving low scores might harm social relations
Value own contribution more than others
Can’t see all contributions
e.g.,
WebPA mean
Vulnerable to outliers
CATME
Complex to implement
Validity is not transparent
Ko’s iterative method
Complex to implement
Is validity transparent?
OASIS
How OASIS works
Signed statement
Median of teammate ratings
Team negotiation
With teacher intervention if needed
Table comparing advantages and disadvantages of
WebPA
CATME
Ko’s iterative method
OASIS
Benefits
Fair
Transparent
Easy to understand/interpret
Possible disadvantages
This study
Hypotheses
Other control variables
Methods
Introduce overall approach
Pre-survey of free rider link to students’ view of group work (10 )
Free rider Pre-survey  OASIS  Free rider Post-survey (20)
Participants
Recruitment of participants
Table comparing participants in each region
Country
Economy?
Cultural values?
School
Demographics
Funding and/or other differences
Teacher
Demographics
Students
Demographics
Sample Size
Power analysis
Procedure
Flowchart of procedure
Pre-course
Course description
Introduce OASIS procedures
Post-course
Survey Variables
Table of variables w/ means, SD (if appropriate), min, max
Outcomes
Team projects help me achieve my education goals.
Free riders have harmed me.
Free riders make the grading unfair.
Explanatory variables
Age
Male
Post
Many classmates were free riders in my previous courses.
In my past team projects, members contributed equally.
For each variable,
Describe
Name
Definition
Example if needed
Other info if suitable
Minimum, maximum
Meaning of min and max
Analysis
Table of analytic difficulties and statistics strategies
Data difficulties + solutions
Missing data?
 MCMC-MI
Outcome difficulties + solutions
Ordered variables
 ordered logit/probit
Multiple variables
 multivariate, multilevel outcome models
Explanatory variable difficulties + solutions
False positives
Two-stage linear step-up procedure
2 Explanatory models
Test hypothesis: free rider affects education goal in group
Equation 1 for pre-survey
Explain equation
Vectors of explanatory variables
Test hypothesis: OASIS reduces free rider effects
Surpassing score graph
= inverse cumulative distribution graphs
Show free-rider difference pre- and post-OASIS
Equation 2 for pre-OASIS vs. post-OASIS surveys
Explain equation
Vectors of explanatory variables
Results
Pre-survey – Free rider affect perception of team projects?
Descriptive statistics
HK vs. India differences, briefly
Explanatory model of
Team projects help me achieve my education goals
Age has positive link
Gender not significant
In my past team projects, members contributed equally
Has a positive link
Many classmates were free riders in my previous courses
Has a negative link
Free riders make the grading unfair
Has a positive link
OASIS effect?
Free riders have harmed me
Surpassing score graph
Fewer extremely high scores post-OASIS
Explanatory model
Less free rider harm post-OASIS
Many classmates were free riders in my previous courses
Has a positive link
In my past team projects, members contributed equally
Has a negative link
Free riders make the grading unfair
Surpassing score graph
Fewer extremely high scores post-OASIS
Explanatory model
Fewer people have this view post-OASIS
Age has a positive link
Age x post-OASIS has a negative link
In my past team projects, members contributed equally
Has a positive link
Many classmates were free riders in my previous courses
Has a positive link
Free riders have harmed me
Has a positive link
post-OASIS x Free riders have harmed me
has a negative link
No significant differences across countries.
Discussion
Free riders hurt view that team projects aid education goal
Implication: to maximize team benefits, we should reduce free-riders
OASIS effects
OASIS reduces free rider harm
OASIS reduce perceived grading unfairness due to free riders
Implication: OASIS effectively reduces harm and unfairness due to free riders
No significant differences across countries.
Hence, should test effect of OASIS more broadly for more students in different classes and
countries to determine its scope of effectiveness
Limitations
Only 2 countries
Test more diverse samples in future studies
Only 60 students in HK
Test more students
Collect data on student perceptions
Collect and analyze video recordings of student behaviors
Future studies can use other methods, such as controlled experiments, to test the
robustness of these results
Conclusion
Free riders hurt view that team projects aid education goal
OASIS effects
OASIS reduces free rider harm
OASIS reduce perceived grading unfairness due to free riders