Teammates as a Digital Evaluation Tool: An Action Research Approach to Mitigate Free Riding Issue

Abstract

Purpose – This paper focuses on the issue of free riders among students in completing group assignments given by the course instructor. Problems arise in diverse situations when a group of students is doing an assignment, thus one needs to determine an optimal way to complete the assignments in the best possible way. This study intends to minimize the free riding issue, so that full commitment and participation by the group members could be reached at an optimum level.

Methodology – To solve this problem, a peer evaluation strategy was conducted by using a TEAMMATES system. The methods employed were survey and semi-structured interview. The respondents for the study were 27 students selected using convenience sampling from the Group F of Foundation Centre of UUM that registered in the Introduction to Philosophy course. The total number of students were divided into groups of five or six students. The TEAMMATES were deployed with the aid of structured assignments to facilitate the identification of free riding and further interventions with targeted and all students, before going into another cycle which totals up to four cycles following the action research method.

Findings – The finding shows that the application of TEAMMATES is remarkably significant in combating free riders among students, as the result indicates that TEAMMATES has affected students' commitment and participation in completing the assignments.

Significance – This research is very significant in the fact that it can help to overcome the free rider problem among students and the course instructors to fulfil the course requirement and find ways to alleviate the problem through interventions proposed by this research.