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Group work are an essential component of engineering education programs. It is a challenge to assess
individual contributions in a group work assessment. General approach is to provide an identical
grade to all the group members. However, the problem with this approach is that of free riders, who
benefits but contributes less than their fair share of the tasks in the group work. To overcome this
issue a novel approach was employed. Two group assessments were considered in the analysis. After
each assessment, the group was asked to submit a single report with a chapter on individual
contributions. Students were asked to indicate the percentage of contribution from each member
clearly specifying individual contribution. Students were asked to provide strong justification when
two group members were given the same contribution percentage. Based on a questioner consisting
of open-ended and multiple answer questions, 167 student feedback statements received. These
statements were used to investigate the fairness and acceptability of the employed method.
Majority of (94%) students were satisfied with the percentage of contribution received from the
group and 80% stated that it is fair to be evaluated by peers. Students have commended the method
to be evaluated by peers since peers know the best about how each member have performed. Those
who stated that the method is unfair, raised the difficulties of assigning a unique percentage for each
member and requested to assign the same marks to several students. With this revision authors
propose the usage of aforementioned method to avoid free riders
