The reasons for offering team assignments include student, faculty, and learning issues (see other reasons in the Introduction to Teams).

Learning Issues

• Teams come to faculty members with higher-level questions, which implies that they have resolved the lower-level questions
• Research on social dependence supports the assertion that positive interdependent groups produce higher quality results

Student Issues

• Allow students to gain experience working in a team (looks good on a résumé)
• Make students more comfortable with using teams

Faculty Issues

• Make faculty members in subsequent classes less skeptical of student abilities
• Grade fewer (50% to 25%) papers
• Have peers grade with careful guidance some of the above papers

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References for further information

1. Kaufman, D.B., Felder, R.M., and Fuller, H. (2000), "Accounting for Individual Effort in Cooperative Learning Teams," J. Engineering Education, 89(2), 133140.
   
2. Van Duzer, E., and McMartin, F. (1999), "Building Better Teamwork Assessments:  A Process for Improving the Validity and Sensitivity of Self/Peer Ratings," Proceedings, ASEE Conference.
3. Brown, R.W. (1995), "Autorating:  Getting Individual Marks from Team Marks and Enhancing Teamwork," Proceedings, FIE Conference.

http://www.eas.asu.edu/~asufc/teaminginfo/teams.html
http://www.uoregon.edu/~bartj/pae/peer-eval.html
http://arapaho.nsuok.edu/~legatski/4213Peer.htm
http://iluvatar.lcps.k12.nm.us/manual/eval/peer.html