Some students, educators, and other stakeholders object to the same grade for all view. Among their reasons are:

1. When all group members receive the same grade, future teachers, parents, etc., face difficulty interpreting that grade. To understand the reason for this lack of clarity, imagine the following scenario. Students A and B are as identical as two people can possibly be as to knowledge, skill, and effort. However, Student A’s groupmates are superior to Student B’s groupmates on all three of those characteristics. As a result, Student A’s grade is likely to be higher than Student B’s.
2. Student motivation may decline after watching their grades suffer due to their groupmates’ poor contributions to the groupwork.
3. Following from Reason 2, after students see their grades falling due to their groupmates, they may develop an overall negative attitude toward learning with peers. This negativity can spread to teachers, parents, and other stakeholders who may become vocal opponents of cooperative learning in any form. However, these objections can be addressed by giving students individual grades but still valuing their groupwork.

Ways to implement each group member being graded separately include:

1. Groups study together but do assessment tasks, such as tests, alone.
2. Groups do a project together. The project itself is not graded, but each student works alone to write a report about what was done and learned in the project, and that report is graded.
3. Groups do a project or report together, with each member responsible for one part of the project / report. Each person’s grade is based on their part.
4. Group members each do a separate, related task with feedback from groupmates, with an individual grade on the task.