Everyone,

I emailed Joanne to ask her about collecting percentages of work. She said that it would be better if we could communicate about it ourselves and come to a common solution. So let's talk about this: first, how do we want to do this?

Lydia

-- Anonymous, December 08, 1998

Answers

Since I have received no responses, and I think this needs to be done when we hand in the Whitepaper tomorrow, here is my proposal.

I will volunteer to take people's input and present it as a whole. My suggestion is that each person send me a number and a blurb for each other person (you can just send a single number for yourself, no blurb if you don't want) trying not to identify who you are. Then I can present it per person, listing a number and a blurb given anonymously by each person. I will then present the median and the mean of the whole. This should provide the best solution in my opinion.

Please respond as soon as possible so that we can get moving on this.

-- Anonymous, December 09, 1998

That sounds fine with me, except I think each person should rate the other 5 people and not himself or herself. Otherwise, you have a sticky conflict of interest (being honest vs. self-interest). Plus, if you just rate other people and not yourself, it's easier to think about how much of the remaining work was done by each person.

What do you think about that?

Also, let's make a list to help us evaluate this. I'll get it started:

- Contribution at the meetings (were they prepared? Did they come up with helpful ideas? Did they participate?) - Contribution to the in-class presentation (brainstorming, organization, creation) - Contribution to the whitepaper (brainstorming, writing, critiquing other people's sections) - Contribution to general logistics of running a team (administrative things, organizational things) - Contribution to other people's work (critiquing, assisting)

Any more thoughts?

- Michelle.

-- Anonymous, December 09, 1998

Okay, let's do that. Take your 100 percent and divide it up to the 5 other people, ignoriging yourself.

I think what Michelle wrote is helpful, but certainly you can also just evaluate what you think is important. Since you are going to be averaged in, and you aren't evaluating yourself, then it shouldn't be a big problem if we use slightly different criteria.

Please send this to me by tonight at midnight.

-- Anonymous, December 09, 1998

I don't agree with anonymous grading. We are all adults here and we should feel free to say what we mean and to hear what others have to say about our performance. I don't want to be radical, but I don't feel comfortable in participating in any anonymous process for determining the groups grade.

In addition. . .

My first priority is getting the paper done. I don't know if we will have to upgrade Enoch's section. This is something I really was not planning to do (time-wise).

In light of this, I don't want to spend time tonight allocating percentages of work to everyone in the group. Is there some reason why this has to be turned in with our whitepaper? If this requirement is given on the 6.805 homepage, please forgive my ignorance. But even if this requirement is specifically stated there, our need to make additions to Enoch's section suggests we are in a mild "crisis: mode.

I think Lessig and Abelson would understand if we send our assessments of each group members grade by email after we turn in our whitepaper (e.g. Friday). Grades don't go in at Harvard (i.e. prof required to report their grades) until the end of December (at least) and they couldn't possibly need our assessment of our group grades before they have read our whitepaper.

Kris

-- Anonymous, December 09, 1998

Although I agree with Kristina in principle, I still favor anonymous grading. Sure, in an ideal world we should all be able to speak openly and listen carefully like adults. But there's a reason why you are guaranteed a secret ballot for elections; there's a reason why exams at Harvard are blind-graded; there's a reason why course evaluations are done anonymously; there's a reason why jurors must not know the defendant. It's because it's much easier to be honest when you're anonymous. When you know the person involved, you have a conflict of interest and your evaluation will likely be skewed one way or the other -- whether because you like someone and hope to remain friendly with them, or because you don't want to hurt someone's feelings, or because you want to avoid conflict.

As for your second point, I agree wholeheartedly -- I think we should focus on the paper, and figure out the grades later. Let's email the profs tomorrow morning. If they say they want the grades by tomorrow, we'll figure it out at that point.

- Michelle.

-- Anonymous, December 09, 1998