HOW SINGAPORE EDUCATION WORKS · University project contribution records
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A useful contribution record says who did what, identifies the resulting output or revision, and states whether the work is planned, completed or checked. Keep enough evidence for another team member to understand the contribution. A list of hours, names or meeting attendance cannot do that job on its own.
Full chapter index · Practice and checking · Sources and next reading · How Singapore Education Works
This guide helps university students in Singapore make a practical project record. The template and examples are teaching suggestions. Your module's assessment brief, submission format and academic integrity instructions take priority; a well-kept log does not create a particular entitlement to marks or authorship.
The choices at a glance
| What you notice | Possible issue | Useful next move |
|---|---|---|
| Entry says only helped with report | The actual change cannot be found | Name the action, output revision and status |
| Plan is presented as completed work | Allocation and completion are mixed | Record what happened and what remains |
| Equal hours are treated as equal marks | A time measure is asked to judge quality | Read outputs and actual assessment criteria |
Full chapter index
Purpose and a usable entry
Worked record and repairs
Numbers and writing practice
Research connections and questions
CHAPTER 1 OF 8 · Purpose and a usable entry
1. Decide what the record needs to explain
A team allocation says what people intend to do. A contribution record describes what they actually did. A final contribution statement summarises that record for a particular audience. Mixing these stages can make an unfinished plan look like completed work.
Start by reading the assignment instructions. Is a log required? Who can view it? Are individual reflections or peer assessments requested? Does the lecturer prescribe a form? Use that form when required rather than submitting this guide's example instead.
If no record is prescribed, agree a lightweight shared approach. The purpose is to make work and handovers understandable, not to produce a surveillance diary. Decide when to update it and how people can correct a mistaken description.
Keep assessment decisions with the responsible teaching team. A contribution record can supply evidence for a discussion, but students should not invent a private formula that automatically converts their entries into everyone's marks.
CHAPTER 2 OF 8 · Purpose and a usable entry
2. Record an action, an output and its status
Use a dated entry with a named contributor or contributors, a concrete action, an output reference and a status. Add a check or handover note when it matters. An output might be a source annotation, a corrected table, a diagram, a decision note or an explanation that changed the team's method.
“Worked on report” is hard to inspect. “Rewrote the comparison paragraph in report v03 to distinguish weekday and weekend observations; awaiting team review” identifies both the change and its limit.
Choose stable references: a version label, section heading, approved document link or change note. A link to a constantly changing file may need a revision reference so a later reader can find the work being described. Keep evidence within the project's permitted access arrangements.
Useful statuses include planned, in progress, completed by contributor, and checked by a named reviewer. Agree what each means. “Completed by contributor” can be true before a reviewer accepts the result; the status should make that difference visible.
Imagine three students preparing a fictional report on how people choose study spaces. The work uses invented data for this exercise; no real participants or findings are represented. The team keeps one record alongside its report.
| Contributor and date | Specific work and output | Status or check |
|---|---|---|
| Aisha, 8 October | Narrowed the comparison question; wrote question-note v01 with two excluded interpretations | Team discussed and accepted the scope |
| Ben, 9 October | Removed two accidentally repeated rows from practice-table v02; recorded their row IDs and reason | Completed; Chen checked against the supplied fictional input |
| Chen, 10 October | Checked the percentage denominator in report v03; added a correction comment and recalculated the displayed result | Correction applied; Aisha confirmed the paragraph matches the table |
The entries describe different kinds of work. Aisha's decision may produce few words but shape the whole report. Ben's correction may reduce the dataset rather than add content. Chen's checking is a contribution even if the final paragraph is written by someone else.
Checking answer: if the fictional input contained 18 rows including two accidental repeats, removing those two leaves 16 rows. That arithmetic checks the described change; it does not prove that the exclusion rule was appropriate. The input reference and reason are needed to inspect that decision.
If Chen and Ben worked together on a correction, record their actual roles together. Do not assign the entire change to the person who happened to press Save.
When an entry is vague, ask a factual question: “Which section changed?” or “What decision came out of that discussion?” Add the answer only if the contributor can identify what happened. Do not manufacture a polished account to fill a blank.
When a teammate says a description is incomplete, preserve the disagreement while checking relevant evidence. A change history can show edits, but may miss a spoken explanation, a calculation on paper or joint thinking at one keyboard. Ask about the work before interpreting an empty edit history as no contribution.
For a missed handover, record the operational issue: “Draft due Tuesday was not available at the review meeting; revised handover agreed for Thursday.” Avoid labels about character or intention. If the problem affects assessment or cannot be resolved, follow the module's stated route for seeking help.
Correct errors transparently. For example, add a dated note that a task initially attributed to one student was jointly completed. A believable record can contain revisions; it need not pretend the team understood everything perfectly from the beginning.
CHAPTER 5 OF 8 · Numbers and writing practice
5. Use numbers without turning them into a verdict
Suppose all three students report four hours of work. The total is 12 person-hours, and each reported four twelfths, or one third, of that time. It does not follow that each produced one third of the intellectual value, met one third of every criterion or should receive a particular mark.
Likewise, if three of four planned tasks are marked complete, the task count is 75% complete. That figure treats each task as one item. It says nothing about unequal task size, the quality of completed work or whether the remaining task is essential to submission.
Use counts for the question they can answer. Hours can help estimate a schedule; task status can expose a blocked handover. Neither replaces reading the outputs and the actual assessment criteria.
NTU publishes an example assessment resource that considers several dimensions of group contribution, including dependable participation and intellectual work. It is one teaching example, not a universal NTU rule or a formula for all Singapore university projects.
CHAPTER 6 OF 8 · Numbers and writing practice
6. Practise writing entries you could check
For guided practice, improve this entry: “Helped with slides, two hours.” The supplied facts are that Mei changed slide 6 in deck v04, corrected a chart label from visits to people after checking the source table, and asked Noor to review it. No review has yet occurred.
Checking answer: “Mei corrected the chart label on slide 6 of deck v04 after checking the source table; completed by Mei, awaiting Noor's review.” Keep the reported time separately if the module asks for it. Do not change the status to checked before Noor reviews it.
For independent practice, rewrite “We did the analysis.” The only known facts are that Arun proposed a grouping rule in methods-note v02, Jia applied it to the practice data in table v03, and both have yet to check whether the categories overlap.
Checking answer: identify Arun's proposed rule and Jia's application as separate actions, reference their outputs, and mark the overlap check as outstanding. Do not claim that the analysis is validated or that one person completed the whole process.
Now ask a teammate to find each referenced output without your help. A record that sounds specific but points to the wrong revision needs repair too.
CHAPTER 7 OF 8 · Research connections and questions
7. Connect the record to research and working life
Later, close the template and reconstruct one recent contribution using action, output and status. Compare it with the evidence, then correct any missing qualifier. This checks whether the record reflects work rather than copied wording.
For changed-context transfer, try a laboratory team, a design project or an internship handover. The outputs and access rules will differ. The central question remains: can the next reader tell what was done, where to inspect it and what remains unresolved?
A global connection is NISO's CRediT contributor-role vocabulary, used in research. The University of Nottingham's open-research teaching resource explains that people can share roles or hold several roles. Such vocabulary can help teams notice contributions beyond drafting prose.
CRediT does not itself decide authorship or author order. It also does not set your module's marks. Use role names only when they accurately describe the work, and follow the relevant institution, discipline and publication rules for formal credit.
The related guide to peer learning and explaining ideas helps with the conversations that make joint work visible in the first place.
CHAPTER 8 OF 8 · Research connections and questions
8. Questions students often ask
Do I need to record every small edit?
Usually a short entry for a meaningful change is more useful than a stream of keystrokes. Follow any prescribed detail level. Group minor related corrections when the resulting entry remains clear and truthful.
Can a meeting count as a contribution?
A meeting may involve decisions, explanations or checking. Describe that work and its outcome. Attendance alone does not show what someone contributed, and an important discussion may need a brief decision note as evidence.
Should we share private messages as proof?
Do not routinely copy private conversations or personal information into the log. Use an appropriate project note, agreed summary or permitted output reference. Ask the teaching team how to provide sensitive evidence if a formal concern needs escalation.
What if our final statement differs from the original plan?
Describe the work actually completed and explain important changes. Invite contributors to check their descriptions before submission. A plan that changed is not automatically a problem; presenting the original allocation as a factual completion record is misleading.
Sources and next reading
Primary sources checked on 23 October 2026: NTU example assessment criteria for a humanities group task and University of Nottingham: open research practices, credit and contribution. These provide institutional examples and conceptual context, not assessment instructions for your module.
For the underlying research-role vocabulary, see NISO CRediT. The university teaching source above explicitly explains the distinction between contribution roles and authorship decisions. All project entries, data and practice answers in this guide are original fictional examples.
Continue with peer learning and group study or return to How Singapore Education Works.
Learning at other stages
Continue with a different learning task in this series. Each guide has its own worked cases, practice and limits.
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