B-Plan Finalists: Selected by the Contestants

Ever heard of the contestants selecting the finalists of a Contest? Audience-based polls are done in many contests both on-line as well as face-to-face. But we let the contestants decide their own finalists. Some of you may say that such choices will always be biased. Because every contestant wants to win, every contestant feels he/she is the best. Therefore, can such assessment be kept objective and fair? How? Read on.

Finals of the Annual Business Plan Contest of the course that I teach will be held shortly. We had 25 teams presenting their B-Plans to a class of 75 PGDM students undergoing the course 'Entrepreneurship and Startup Management'. We had to select eight finalist teams out of 25 teams. This year, we used 'peer assessment' technique to get the contestant's assessment of all other teams. In addition, an inter-disciplinary team of faculty evaluated each of the B-Plans. Each team had to follow a template and were assessed on both the written B-Plan as well as their presentation in the class. After every presentation, the anonymous assessment by each of the remaining 24 teams (n-1) was recorded. The faculty made their independent assessment. 

On completion of all the presentations, the data was collated to determine the eight finalists. There was a strong correlation between peer assessment and faculty evaluation. Out of eight finalists, seven choices were identical. The choice of eighth finalist differed because peer assessment did not include hard-copy evaluation, which was done only by the faculty. So, what is the lesson in this mode of assessment? If the contestants are given a well-defined template and asked to do a dispassionate and objective assessment, they will be honest. Trust your students, they will deliver! Statistical randomness may still be there in peer assessment, but it gets evened out.

It was a fulfilling experiment by Ghumakkad as a teacher. In turn, it empowered my students to be fair and honest judges of their peers' performance. Of course, the corporate world uses peer reviews in the 360 degree employee performance measurement. Ghumakkad thus brought another facet of real life into the classroom!

Talking of bringing realism into the classroom, you may like to browse some of our earlier stories linked below:
Teacher 10 on 10: Teachers expect their students to score 10 out of 10. But are the teachers also 10 on 10?

Bringing Realism into the Classroom: What do the students want?

Making Classroom a Fun Place: How to make your class interesting?

Congratulations to the entire PGDM Class of 2020 at VVISM, Hyderabad for a job well done. We wish all the best to the finalists listed below in alphabetical order of their Startup names:

1. Diabilicious
2. Earn My Bread
3. Eat Me Up
4. Eco Pencils
5. E-Purohit
6. Maid in India
7. My Bus
8. Petals

The Finalists have more work to do. Get on with it!

Special thanks to Dr Ritu Bihani and Prof KV Lakshman for their assistance in selecting the finalists.

Learning never ends!

     -   Harsh-the-teacher-cum-Ghumakkad/28th Oct 2019
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