I had one group project for an arts and media class, where I feared, that I'd be the one who'd have to do all the work alone. It got assigned on the one day when I was sick and when I came in the next day, every group and task was assigned and I was left to team up with that one guy that everyone didn't want in their team, as everyone knew he'd do nothing.

On that day I managed to plan out the project with him and assign all task (while silently trying to keep the scope in a way, that I should be able to do everything alone, if he failed his tasks). I knew he was a huge Star Trek fan, so keeping that as the theme for the project and making a small Star Trek "parody" helped to keep him on board. But after that first day? As expected - nothing. He didn't talk to me, didn't do any tasks, basically ignored me. So I made some small changes and had to complete the project alone.

In the end, I even did the presentation alone, as my team mate was missing some classes as usual. The teacher came to me, said he knew I did almost everything alone and was impressed by the scope of what I still managed to complete.

Grades in these classes worked like this: You get a score between 0 and 15 points. 15 is best, 0 is worst. You failed the class, when your average rating was lower than 5 points at the end. The teacher said, that this project would be 14 points for each of us, but *hint* *hint* that I was free to distribute the points between us, as I saw fitting for the worke done. I had to distribute all 28 points between us and *hint* *hint* if I were to assign more than 15 points to a person those were valid, but capped at 15 for the calculation of the final grade.

Guess who got 28 points for this project.

IMHO a fair way to grade group projects, as long as you're keeping an eye on the discussion on why/how to distribute points, so that it yields fair results.