There is often some confusion about what this term means. As Race states, it can refer to:

[…] the assessment by a tutor of the products of student group work, or to the assessment of the product by students from other groups (inter-peer assessment), or the assessment of the product of group work by students within a group (intra-peer assessment), and can include self-assessment by individuals or by the group as a whole of the product they have generated, and/or their respective contributions towards the product. Therefore it is usual for group assessment to involve at least some elements of peer assessment and self-assessment. (Race, 2001b: 4)

Group work is now fairly common in language assessment programmes and most often culminates in a group presentation of some sort, either to a whole class or recorded on video. In most cases, such tasks are simply marked conventionally by the tutor. A way to heighten motivation by involving a degree of self- and peer assessment is to have students award marks to their own group, including themselves, for different aspects of the task (eg presence and voice projection, use of notes, presentational skills, etc). Alternatively, the whole class might be invited to allocate these marks to each group in turn. Clearly, the tutor would have to moderate marks and supplement them with his or her own assessment of accuracy, fluency, pronunciation and intonation, etc).

Schmidt and O'Dochartaigh (2001: 93) mention a variation of this approach, whereby group presentations and a related written report are marked by an equally weighted combination of:

• class members' mark;
• group members' mark;
• teacher mark for presentation;
• teacher mark for the submitted report.

The reason for these involved processes, and the reason why many reject group work, is the issue of the 'passenger', or the student who does not pull his or her weight in the group. There is no easy solution to this, but Race suggests possible approaches:

1. Use the same group mark for all.
2. Divide the task and assess each component separately.
3. Award an equal mark to each group member and add marks for individual assessment tasks.
4. Award a mark for the product and ask group members to peer-assess an additional mark for their individual contributions.
5. Have a group viva and award individual marks.
6. Award all group members the same mark but add an individual viva.
7. Award a single group mark to all and add a separate but related assessment component to a subsequent exam. (Race, 2001b: 17-18)

All these have disadvantages. (1) does not really address the problem and can lead to student resentment. (2) and (3) may be difficult if the tutor has little insight into the process that has led to the end product. (4) is potentially problematic but does put the onus on those who know best how much each individual has contributed to the task. (5) is fraught with the same difficulties of all group oral work (eg ensuring all get to speak a reasonable amount, that the more able students do not dominate). (6) and (7) are perhaps least contentious but clearly add to a tutor's workload.