This project received an A grade, although not all students got full credit for the project. In order to encourage the students to work as a team on the projects, I ask each student to hand in a note explaining whether or not they thing the other students in their group put in a good effort on the project. There were three students in the entire class that felt their fellow group members did not help in the effort. Two of these papers were from this group. I do not rely solely on student perceptions on this, however. As I explain to the students early in the class, the authors on a mathematical research paper are listed alphabetically, which is quite different from how it is done in most fields. I tell the students that we do this because it is often extremely difficult to really track down who is responsible for an idea since much of the time spent brainstorming collaborators will bounce ideas off of each other. Consequently, I also spend some time analyzing my experience with the students both from their weekly reports and from the time spent in my office.
For this particular project group, Mary reported that both of the other students did not spend as much time on the project as she did. Emily reported that Teri did not spend as much time on the project as she thought appropriate, while Teri reported that both of the other students did a good job. My personal evaluation was that Mary and Emily both spent significant time on the project, but that Teri did not. I based this on the following evidence. First, while Mary was often in my office discussing project work by herself, I did see Emily as often as I saw most other students in the class. On the other hand, I only saw Teri occasionally. Moreover, parts of the project clearly bore Emily's signature. As stated earlier in this section, Emily found computer applications and work extremely interesting. Spreadsheet ideas were in the paper, and Mary reported that Emily had done most of the work on the relationship between the harmonic series and music. Thus, Emily and Mary got full credit for the project, but Teri did not. Click here to see the rubric breakdown.