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Team Evaluation

Team Evaluation

Team Evaluation is a course-integrated peer evaluation platform designed for team-based classes using Canvas. Its primary function is to let students complete structured evaluations of themselves and teammates using a 7-criterion rubric, launched directly from Canvas through LTI 1.1.

The backend manages roster syncing from Canvas, stores students and submissions in MongoDB, generates summary and export artifacts, and posts completion grades back to Canvas. The frontend is a responsive React survey UI that only activates when launched with server-injected LTI context.

Status

This repository has been superseded by OptiTeam. Team Evaluation represents an earlier iteration of what became the OptiTeam project. The README describes the Canvas-integrated system, while the actual code remains a generic FastAPI + MongoDB (Beanie) application template skeleton.

Consider OptiTeam the canonical project; Team Evaluation is retained as a historical reference and source of requirements and lessons learned.

Spring 2026 Pilot

Spring 2026 was the first semester Team Evaluation was run systematically — after every lab session, not just at mid-semester and end-of-semester milestones. Students completed structured peer evaluations of their teammates using the 7-criterion rubric after each 170-minute lab, generating a rich longitudinal dataset.

The results were striking: - Higher completion rates than end-of-cycle evaluations — students found it easier to recall specific contributions when evaluating immediately after a session - Temporal granularity revealed team dynamics invisible in once-per-semester snapshots: early sprint conflicts that resolved, gradual disengagement patterns, and teams that oscillated between functional and dysfunctional - Instructor intervention signals became actionable — the evaluation dashboard flagged teams with consistent low scores across consecutive sessions, enabling timely check-ins before problems escalated

The pilot confirmed that high-frequency peer evaluation is not just feasible but produces richer, more actionable data for both students and instructors.

Future Plans

Psephos Engine

Team Evaluation will be refactored to use Psephos as its scoring and tabulation engine. Psephos (psephos.app) is a generalized voting and decision-making platform that provides robust aggregation algorithms, audit trails, and configurable scoring methods. Rather than maintaining a custom scoring implementation, Team Evaluation will delegate its logistic (sigmoid) peer-score aggregation to Psephos's proven engine.

UMACS Authentication

The platform will adopt UMACS for authentication, replacing the current LTI 1.1 launch flow. UMACS provides a unified identity layer across all CSED tools, meaning students authenticate once and can access Team Evaluation alongside other tools (Capstone Survey, OptiTeam, GradeFlow) without repeated logins.

From Archived to Living

This refactoring will move Team Evaluation from Archived back to active status — not as a standalone tool, but as a frontend that delegates scoring to Psephos and authentication to UMACS, making it a thin but essential layer in the CSED teaching ecosystem.

Relationship to CSED Ecosystem

  • OptiTeam — next-generation team formation engine (successor to this project)
  • Capstone Survey — companion tool for collecting student preferences and skill profiles
  • Canvas (LTI 1.1) — the LMS integration target for both Team Evaluation and OptiTeam
  • Psephos — scoring engine for future iterations
  • UMACS — unified authentication for future iterations
  • Teaching Ecosystem Vision — How the tools fit together