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All About SPARKPLUS

The online tool SPARKPLUS will be used to assess individual contributions to team/group work. You will be required to provide feedback to, and receive feedback from, your team members. Based on a series of answers from each team member SPARKPLUS automatically produces two weighting factors: your RPF and SAPA.

RPF Factor

The Relative Performance Factor, or RPF, is a measure of how the team overall viewed the contribution of each member to the team. It is floating point number greater than, or equal to 0. This factor will be used to modify the group mark for a given Sprint, and reflects the contribution of each team member to the team in the eyes of all the team members. Thus, an individual mark will be the Group Mark x RPF, capped at the full mark for that Sprint (i.e. 5, 10 or 20).

The PRF is computed using the formula:

    

SAPA Factor

The second factor calculated is the SAPA factor. This is the ratio of a student`s own self-assessment rating compared to the average rating of their contribution by their peers. It provides a student with feedback about how the rest of the team perceives the individual student's contribution. For example, a SAPA factor greater than 1 means that a student has rated their own performance higher than they were rated by their peers. Conversely, a SAPA factor less than 1 means that a student has rated their own performance lower than they were rated by their peers.

Why are we using SPARKPLUS?

SPARKPLUS not only makes team work fairer but also encourages the development of professional skills. These skills include giving and receiving positive and negative feedback, resolving conflict, collaborating, assessing your work and the work of your peers, and developing your professional judgment. These are important graduate attributes which are part of the learning outcomes for your degree and are also important to employers. Full participation will enhance both your learning outcomes and your team experience.

How are we using SPARKPLUS?

The University late-submission policy will apply to the SPARKPLUS assessments, i.e. a penalty of 5% to the computed Sprint mark per day, with no submission allowed after 7 days, so a maximum penalty of 35%. You are expected to participate in this task in good faith, and make valid assessments. However, the unit coordinator retains the right to exercise discretion in applying the computed RPF factor to the Sprint mark. This discretion may result in a student's marks being varied from the calculated mark in situations where, in the opinion of the unit coordinator, a team member(s) has / have inadvertently or intentionally, misused SPARKPLUS.

With thanks to the School of Business.



Department of Computer Science & Software Engineering
The University of Western Australia
Last modified: 9 June 2021
Modified By: Michael J Wise
UWA