Reducing Free-riders by Individual Achievement Tracking in Group Work

Abstract

Most people involved in courses with group work, both as students and as teachers, are aware of the problem of free-riders. In courses where group work is combined with forms of individual examination, e.g., an exam, the result may manifest in a discrepancy between the number of students approved on group work and students passing the exam. This examination structure may in this regard be seen as successful as a strategy to catch free-riders. However, combining an exam with group work may work for certain courses, but for other courses it may be infeasible. In this paper, we present our experience of using an adaptation of the Achievement Unlocked approach, with individual achievement tracking, in the context of a project course on Agile Software Development, heavily focused on group work.