Hey Folks,
Hoping someone (or a few someones!) can give me a hand with a couple of assessment questions.
First - from all my reading, PBL appears to be very group based, which I think is great. It models many real life situations and allows for more complex projects to be completed in a reasonable amount of time.
Here’s my issue - even groups that are working “correctly” will delegate - hence the point of having multiple members. Perhaps one person will be calculating the income tax on a salary for a fictional “family budget” portion of a project, while another might be completing a scale drawing of the “families” new home and a third may be looking at mortgages to help pay for all this.
My issue arises in that person one is getting a great lesson on calculating percents, person two is doing a fantastic thing when it comes to scale drawings and person three is doing good work on compound interest, but no one is getting all three. In the “real world” that’s not a problem - we all have skills and are assigned tasks based on them. In a school setting, everyone is expected to learn these three concepts 
.
So, solutions? Should I build into my projects opportunities or “requirements” to diversify? Require person 1 to calculate a car loan, person 2 to calculate sales tax on grocery items and person 3 to work on a scale drawing of a garage? It would work…but then it gets dicey because I have to come up with ANOTHER series of (relevant) tasks to get all three outcomes met.
If they “collaborate” as they’re supposed to, it still appears to me that one or two people will control a conversation or learning….
My second question:
When do you give final “marks”? Ie, as we’re going along, my fictional student A has calculated the income tax wrong - they messed up when considering a personal exemption. Obviously I correct them, they fix it, and they have done some learning. Later in the week they messed up again - retirement contributions weren’t considered. Fixed, learned, etc.
How do I assess this? By all rights, learning should be assessed based on final work - hence the point of making mistakes and fixing them! However, final work states that he gets 100% which, while I agree he indeed has demonstrated the concepts required…isn’t using this “style” going to mean I’m giving a lot of 100%‘s? While I have no trouble with indicating my students learned what they were supposed to (hence me doing my job!) I’m not sure my administrators (or the parents) are going to be okay with a bunch of “100%” for a ton of students - it makes the mark completely meaningless.
On the other hand…marking throughout the process feels unfair- the student did make a mistake, fixed it when it was indicated, so why should he be penalized for that.
In a few cases I can see students simply NOT correcting work, and handing in work that isn’t perfect on the due date, but with my kids, I don’t see that happening a ton - they’re a pretty “good” group.
If you’ve made it this far - thanks! Hoping I can get a bit of feedback