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Impact evaluation of reactive

assessment strategies to address
social loafing by promoting student
cooperation and encouraging mutual
support
a
Miguel Arevalillo-Herráez
a
Computing Department, University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain.
Published online: 15 Apr 2013.

To cite this article: Miguel Arevalillo-Herráez (2014) Impact evaluation of reactive assessment
strategies to address social loafing by promoting student cooperation and encouraging
mutual support, Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 51:5, 523-532, DOI:
10.1080/14703297.2013.785646

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2013.785646

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 Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 2014
Vol. 51, No. 5, 523–532, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2013.785646

Impact evaluation of reactive assessment strategies to address

social loafing by promoting student cooperation and encouraging
mutual support
Miguel Arevalillo-Herráez*

Computing Department, University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain

Cooperative work is an effective strategy when team members are kept motivated
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and collaborate towards the achievement of a common goal. However, social loaf-
ing may significantly reduce educational gains. In this article, we analyse whether
assessment-based reactive strategies that exploit existing emotional relationships
between the team members are effective as a response to unequal commitment in
cooperative tasks. In particular, an adaptive negotiation process that permits
students to improve their grades by improving future scores obtained by free
riders is suggested. Findings support that these types of strategies may have a
great impact in fostering peer tutoring, student cooperation and mutual support.
Keywords: cooperative work; team agreement; equal commitment; social
loafing; assessment

1. Introduction
Positive effects of cooperative learning on student achievement have been reported
by many researchers, and there exists a vast literature on describing significant
improvements in transferrable skills when cooperative strategies are used in the
classroom (e.g. Awang, 2006; Ballantine & Larres, 2007). However, despite the
general consensus that cooperative learning experiences promote greater mastery
and retention and have many other positive effects (Humphreys, Johnson, &
Johnson, 1982), the tendency of individuals to put forth less effort when they are
part of a group is a major difficulty in the application of cooperative learning
approaches in the classroom. This is also known as social loafing; and it is the
focus of many complaints voiced by students regarding unsatisfactory team-based
experiences (Brooks & Ammons, 2003).
In this article, we present an integrated assessment method to address social loaf-
ing that combines commonly used preventive schemes with other reactive
approaches to both ensure individual accountability and encourage further coopera-
tion when unequal commitment is discovered. Despite the large number of research
studies describing ways to establish individual accountability and analysing their
overall effect in student achievement, not that many works analyse possible
responses when these do not produce the expected results. When part of (or all) the
collaborative work takes place outside the classroom, the presence of ‘shirkers’ may
seriously affect the group performance, and ultimately end in personal disputes. To
diminish this effect, we use an assessment strategy which aims at encouraging an

*Email: Miguel.Arevalillo@uv.es

Ó 2013 Taylor & Francis

 524 M. Arevalillo-Herráez

even participation of group members and detecting potential sources of conflict at an

early stage. In addition, we provide an analysis of the effect of the strategy on
student achievement. The results obtained with this method during a two-year period
have been studied, including both quantitative and qualitative data. This study
confirms our hypothesis that reactive methods which focus on fostering peer tutoring
can potentially have a positive effect on student achievement. Although the evalua-
tion took place in an Engineering education context, the strategy is sufficiently
generalisable to be easily adapted to most modules in other areas which use coopera-
tive learning. The article is organised around four major sections. The remainder of
this section describes some of the most relevant literature this article draws on.
Section 2 contextualises the problem, sets the hypothesis and describes the experi-
ment. Section 3 presents the results obtained. Finally Section 4 offers a discussion of
the results, draws some conclusions and outlines some future research work.
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The assessment technique presented in the article draws on previous research that
reports on the positive impact of mutual support and peer tutoring on learning results.
On the one hand, the level of commitment members have to one another and to the
group’s success is considered a key factor in achieving a high-group performance and
learning gains (Johnson & Johnson, 2009). To this end, several authors have remarked
on the importance of planning activities that require all students to contribute to the
task (positive task interdependence), help each other and promote each other’s learn-
ing (Johnson & Johnson, 2000; King, 2002; Slavin, 1996). This importance is
supported by a number of studies which evidence that tasks designed in this way lead
to the development of more complex thinking and problem-solving skills (e.g. Gillies,
2008; Morgan, 2003). In particular, motivational perspectives on cooperative learning
seek situations in which the only way group members can attain their personal goals
is if the group is successful. In this way, group members must help their team mates
to do whatever helps the group to succeed. This is commonly achieved by rewarding
groups according to the sum of individual performances (Slavin, 1993).
On the other hand, peer tutoring has been identified as one of the elements which
underpin the success of cooperative approaches. The effect of verbal explanations on
both tutors and tutees has been extensively studied (e.g. Oortwijn, Boekaerts,
Vedder, & Strijnos, 2008; Topping, 2005). These works concluded that tutoring not
only boosts the learning gains of the tutees, but also that of the tutors. In this respect,
O'Donnell and Dansereau (1992) reported that although students receiving explana-
tions learn more than those who worked alone, the students who gain the most from
cooperative activities are peer tutors. This effect can partially be attributed to the
cognitive restructuring and elaboration processes that necessarily take place when
explaining the material to someone else. These processes help memory retention and
relating concepts to other information already in memory (Wittrock, 1986).

2. Strategy and Context

2.1. The problem
In general, one common way to ensure individual accountability in cooperative
learning environments is by using individual assessments and enforcing dependen-
cies between the grades so that a low grade obtained by one member substantially
affects the rest of the team. Still, experience shows that the unbalanced contribu-
tion problem happens more than would initially be expected. In some cases,
group members may play the so-called ‘sucker’ role and carry the free rider; in
 Innovations in Education and Teaching International 525

others, this has a strong motivational effect and the other team members may
reduce their own effort (Mulvey & Klein, 1998). A major concern with this typi-
cal approach happens when significant differences exist between the scores
obtained by each member in a team in their respective individual assessments. In
general, this is a clear signal that their participation was poorly balanced and indi-
cates that corrective action may be required.

2.2. The hypothesis

Our initial hypothesis is that the combination of adequate preventive and reactive
assessment strategies may have important positive effects on promoting student
cooperation, encouraging mutual support and mitigating the social loafing problem.
To validate this initial hypothesis, we have designed an assessment method which
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not only aims at encouraging the participation of students not initially engaging in
the group task, but also at improving the achievement level of the other group
members who have already shown their commitment. The method combines
adaptive negotiation with an integrated cooperative strategy and uses social pressure
to further encourage cooperation when unequal commitment is detected. The impact
of the assessment method on the students’ performance is then studied.

2.3. Experimental setting

Experimentation has taken place in the ‘Programming languages’ course taught in a
Computer Engineering degree at the University of Valencia in Spain, which has
been designed according to major guidelines to favour cooperation. Each learning
unit has been structured around a cooperative assignment to be solved in teams
outside the classroom – see Arevalillo-Herráez and Claver (2011) for details.
To test whether the use of appropriate reactive strategies may complement the
use of more standard preventive strategies, an integrated assessment method
combining a number of preventive and reactive strategies has been employed. These
are summarised in Figure 1 and further explained below.
The first issue is concerned with the method of assigning students to groups,
which can have a significant impact on student motivation. Although other strate-
gies which consider students’ skills are also possible (e.g. Blowers, 2003), most
instructors use one of two methods to assign students to groups: randomly or by
self-selection (Chapman, Meuter, Toy, & Wright, 2006). Some authors strongly
defend random assignment as the easiest and most effective way of forming the
groups (Johnson & Johnson, 2009), and state that it is the method that best reflects
the workplace (Blowers, 2003). Others, however, argue that self-selection improves

Figure 1. Preventive and reactive strategies used to avoid social loafing.

 526 M. Arevalillo-Herráez

group dynamics (Bacon, Stewart, & Silver, 1999) and it is generally preferable to
random assignment (Chapman et al., 2006). In our case, we allowed students to
group themselves and maintain the group structure throughout the duration of the
module, to benefit from existing relationships between students. In this way, friend-
ship and existing social relationships between students will play in favour of the
strategy, increasing the social cohesiveness of the team. Moreover, as group assign-
ment was decided by the students, any excuses related to it could rightly be rejected
straight away. We have chosen a group size of three members to avoid the
production blocking that occurs as group size increases, as each person has less
opportunity to participate (Diehl & Stroebe, 1987). Still, groups of two and four
students have been accepted in exceptional circumstances, especially when the
number of students did not allow forming all teams with exactly three members.
Secondly, all students have to take an individual quiz at the end of each learning
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unit. This quiz follows a format consistent with the collaborative activities
performed, and most questions are variations of some which appeared in the group-
based exercises. This makes it extremely rare that a student who participates in the
group work obtains a low grade, and makes it unusual that students who do not
participate gain a high score. The student grade for each learning unit is then deter-
mined by averaging the individual score with the geometric average of the grades
obtained by all team members. The geometric average is used because differences
between the scores of the team members are penalised more than by using the
standard average. This grading scheme aims to prevent social loafing, avoiding
‘shirkers’ and establishing individual accountability. Other alternative methods with
a similar purpose have also been proposed in the literature, such as choosing a
group member at random to represent the group and assign all members a grade
that depends upon the selected member’s performance (Slavin, 1996). Such strate-
gies that reward groups based on the sum of individual performances are commonly
used by authors who defend a motivational perspective on cooperative learning.
The shared dependence on both one’s own and the team’s grade contributes to
avoiding the ‘sucker’ role. On one hand, the individual grade obtained by the free
rider acts in detriment to the other members, which causes them not to accept the
situation. On the other hand, the role of the free rider is also made difficult, as the
student’s own grade is also given a relevant weight in the computation of the final
mark. This scheme leads to a different grade for each team member and contributes
to minimising the negative motivational effect that happens in these situations.
Thirdly, when unequal commitment is detected, corrective action is taken. This
consists of an adaptive negotiation stage that proceeds as follows: The group is
gathered and a proposal to improve their grades is suggested. This generally
consists of reducing the impact of the lowest score in the last quiz, but increasing
the impact of the score of the member who obtained it in subsequent quizzes. It
is made clear that this is a one-off opportunity that they are free to accept or
reject, and they are given one day to respond. Prior existing social relationships
between the students will contribute to create a social pressure at both ends to
accept the proposal. On one side, it will be more likely that the free rider will be
willing to make an extra effort to compensate the others, whose individual score
has increased to the detriment of the group. On the other side, the students who
actually did the work should also be more willing to help the free rider to get a
better score in the subsequent quizzes, seeing an opportunity to discard a low
grade from their records. This justifies that the proposal for agreement was
 Innovations in Education and Teaching International 527

accepted in all cases. In addition, the adaptive negotiation stage also helps build a
closer student–lecturer relation, and to form a more supportive perception of the
lecturer’s role. Once the group has accepted the deal, they have to think about
the best strategy to improve their grades, and they soon realise that this is by
helping the student who obtained the lowest score (the weakest student from now
on). In this way, a triple benefit is obtained. First, the weakest student is
supported by the rest of the group, upon whom most of the attention is concen-
trated. That student increases their effort because they feel that they cannot fail
their team mates. Second, by supporting the weakest student, the rest of the
members learn, by explaining, a technique which has already demonstrated posi-
tive effects on the learning process (Ploetzner, Dillenbourg, Praier, & Traum,
1999). Explanations contribute to developing a number of transferrable skills, such
as communication, creativity, autonomous learning, synthesis and information
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search. In addition, it helps Engineering students to develop learning styles other

than the preferred ones. Finally, group cohesion is increased as the task to help
the weakest student is a collaborative task in itself. They first had to decide
together whether to accept the agreement and then decide on a common strategy
to bring about a successful conclusion.
It could be argued that the approach causes a student’s grades to become
dependent on their capacity to tutor and/or another student’s capacity to tutor them.
However, current university regulations establish that the achievement of competenc-
es should also be assessed. The tutoring task involves a number of key competences
explicitly mentioned in the objectives of the module (e.g. communication skills,
synthesising and structuring information). Additionally, the effect of individual
tutoring skills on the group’s performance can be considered an implicit in-built
mechanism to evaluate the competence.

3. Results
At an average class size of 27 students per year, we have had the opportunity
to analyse the data produced by a total of 18 groups during a two-year period.
Thirteen of these were composed of three members, three with two members
and the remaining two had four students. Each year, four cooperative assign-
ments were set, each having its own corresponding individual quiz. Of the 18
groups, significant differences in the student scores achieved in the first quiz
were observed in six cases. This only happened in two groups in the second
quiz, and differed from the first. In all eight cases, they were proposed a
scheme by which they could improve their grades. This implied reducing the
weight of the lowest score but increasing the weight of the score obtained by
the weakest student in the subsequent quizzes. The proposal was accepted in all
instances. A total of six students dropped out of the course, and they were all
in two groups. Their scores have not been considered in the analysis presented
in this section.
All scores presented in this section refer to individual scores, and are given accord-
ing to the Spanish grading system, a scale from 0 to 10, with 10 representing the
highest score and 5 the minimum passing grade. Team scores have not been used
because the alteration of grades that happened as a consequence of the agreements
would certainly play in our interest and not be an appropriate measure of student
performance.
 528 M. Arevalillo-Herráez

3.1. Does adaptive negotiation improve scores?

Table 1 shows average scores organised by whether some corrective action was taken
in reaction to significant differences in scores. Average scores for students in groups in
which no significant differences were observed are fairly constant across the four quiz-
zes (row A in table). In contrast, a boost in performance occurs just after negotiation in
groups that were subject to this stage (rows B and C), and this is maintained from there
on. This clearly suggests a positive effect after the acceptance of the agreement.
To further illustrate the effect of the adaptive negotiation process, we compared
results when this is applied to those obtained if no reactive action is adopted. To this
end, we compared the average individual scores obtained in groups in which a
corrective action was taken after the first quiz to those obtained in the previous year
by groups with significant score differences between their members. In the latter
case, only preventive strategies were used, and scores were not pre-analysed to
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detect social loafing. Average scores in this case correspond to a total of nine
students (three groups). Scores for groups that dropped the course at an intermediate
stage have not been considered. The results are shown in Figure 2 and evidence the
contagious negative effect of social loafing on the individual grades, which decrease
as the course progresses.

3.2. Who benefits more?

One interesting question would be related to which students are responsible for this
increase in performance. This can be better determined from Table 2. A large
improvement can be observed in the scores obtained by all students in groups in
which a corrective action was adopted. Scores in rows B and D show that students
other than the weakest benefited as much as the weakest when a corrective action
was taken (rows A and C). In this case, learning gains were observed for both
students who received explanations and those who explained the materials to others.
In the former case, students who received the team support showed a performance
boost just after the corrective action. However, in the latter, the score improvement
was not as impactful, but this is in part due to the fact that a high score had already
obtained by those students and therefore their scope for improvement was more
limited. Still, their progress is noticeable and maintained across the rest of the quiz-
zes, evidencing the benefits of learning by explaining (Ploetzner et al., 1999). This
supports findings by other authors, who have pointed out that students who provide
explanations typically learn more than students who listen to them (Webb, 1992). In
fact, some researchers have shown evidence that the greatest benefit comes from
the preparation to teach, rather than from the act of teaching itself, attributing this
effect to the use of a different method of study (e.g. Bargh & Schul, 1980).

Table 1. Average scores obtained in each quiz. A – Students in groups with no significant
score differences in first nor second quiz. B – Students in groups with significant score
differences in first quiz. C – Students in groups with significant score differences in the
second quiz.

Group (see table caption) First quiz Second quiz Third quiz Fourth quiz
A 6.48 6.25 6.30 6.24
B 5.02 7.18 7.76 7.87
C 5.00 4.42 6.73 6.53
 Innovations in Education and Teaching International 529

Figure 2. Average scores obtained in each quiz by students in groups with significant score
differences in first quiz. Scores when using adaptive negotiation and when not.

Table 2. Average scores obtained in each quiz. A – Weakest students in groups with
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significant score differences in first quiz. B – Students other than the weakest ones in groups
with significant score differences in first quiz. C – Weakest students in groups with
significant score differences in second quiz. D – Students other than the weakest ones in
groups with significant score differences in second quiz.

Group (see table caption) First quiz Second quiz Third quiz Fourth quiz
A 1.82 6.67 7.32 7.10
B 6.62 7.43 7.98 8.26
C 4.70 1.95 7.40 6.95
D 5.15 5.65 6.40 6.33

3.3. How do drop rates get affected?

Apart from the benefits associated with the performance increase, drop rates also
reduced significantly. Six out of 53 students represents just 11.3% of the class size,
in contrast to 22% in the previous year. In addition, the fact that no drops occurred
in groups in which corrective actions were taken supports the strategy further.

3.4. What do students think?

Students were asked to evaluate from one (lowest) to five (highest) whether they
believe the fact that their scores affect others has increased their commitment to the
group. All students assigned a score from 3 to 5 to the question. In particular,
37.5% of the participants answered with a value of three, 28.1% with four and
34.4% with a five.
Some of the students in groups requiring corrective actions were also informally
asked to give their opinion about the strategy. In this case, 78% of the weakest
students agreed that the factor that contributed the most to their improvement was
the fear of risking a friendship, evidencing the effect of the social pressure
motivated by the group assignment method. In addition, all students interviewed
recognised that the strategy helped them to improve their team work skills.

4. Discussion and conclusions

According to the motivationalist school of thought, group rewards that depend on indi-
vidual performances are required to achieve effective cooperative structures. Many
methods have been proposed in the literature with this purpose in mind. In our case,
 530 M. Arevalillo-Herráez

this was achieved by making the final student’s grade dependent upon the scores
achieved by the rest of the team members on a series of individual quizzes. Another
common strategy consists of naming a representative for the group and assigning all
members a grade that depends on the selected member’s score.
While these assessment methods have proven successful in cooperative contexts,
they can all be considered as preventive strategies. Although they discourage social
loafing, they can be made more effective if they are endorsed by other reactive
strategies that supplement them when they do not yield the expected results. One
such method is to promote mutual support when significantly unequal commitment
is detected, by establishing agreements that focus on low achievers and aim at
fostering a higher interdependence among the team members. These agreements
allow teams to compensate for low scores obtained in quizzes by the weakest
member, provided that they are able to improve his/her performance. In this way,
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the effort made to help the weakest member results in a benefit for the entire group.
On one hand, the performance of the weakest student improves because of the extra
support provided by the rest of the team, which is encouraged because it works for
their own benefit. On the other hand, the effort made by the rest of the team
members also yields better results for everyone, in part because of the learning
benefits derived from cooperation and the explanations provided to the weakest
student. In fact, most of the success achieved by the reactive strategy can be
ascribed to the peer tutoring which is triggered as a consequence of the adaptive
negotiation. This suggests undertaking further research to determine in which way
similar strategies can be applied to groups which are, in principle, working well.
Another positive result derived from the use of the strategy has been a substan-
tial reduction in the drop rates. We believe that this has been produced mainly as a
result of increased mutual student support, this time enhanced by the pre-existing
social relations fostered by the member assignment method. This would also
partially explain why only entire groups dropped the module.
In addition, the fact that the majority of the weakest students expressed that the
pre-existing friendship was the factor that contributed the most to their improvement
suggests that the exploitation of social pressure in cooperative contexts is an issue
which should be explored further. In particular, the social value, cost and profit associ-
ated with the student’s effort in a cooperative environment should be evaluated from a
psychological perspective and their implications in learning should be studied in
greater detail.
In general, most collaborative learning methods are underpinned by assessment-
based preventive methods aiming at encouraging cooperation and avoiding the free
rider problem. We believe that reactive methods should be given a greater rele-
vance, and these should be supported by motivational techniques as opposed to
punishment. In this article, an adaptive negotiation strategy that exploits existing
social relationships has shown positive results in combating social loafing, promot-
ing student cooperation and encouraging mutual support. However, this is just an
example that assessment-based reactive methods may yield a great impact on
student performance. Further research is required to study the effect of other reac-
tive methods and judge on their suitability.

Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank funding from the Vice-rectorate of European
Convergence and Quality of the University of Valencia, through projects Finestra Oberta
 Innovations in Education and Teaching International 531

UV-SFPIE_FO12-80215 and 79/FO11/31; and from the Ministry of Education through

project TIN2011-29221-C03-02.

Notes on contributor
Miguel Arevalillo-Herráez received the first degree in Computing from the Technical
University of Valencia, Spain, in 1993; the BSc in Computing from Liverpool John Moores
University, UK, in 1994; and the PgCert in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education and
the PhD degree in 1997, both also from Liverpool John Moores University, UK. On this
same year, he gained accreditation as a teacher in HE by the Staff and Educational
Development Association and became a senior lecturer at Liverpool John Moores University.
In 1999, he left to work for private industry for a one-year period, and came back to
academy in 2000. He was the program leader for the computing and business degrees at the
Mediterranean University of Science and Technology until 2006. From this year, he works
as a lecturer in the University of Valencia (Spain). His research now concentrates in
Education and Applied Artificial Intelligence.
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