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Specifications and mastery grading schemes have been growing in popularity in higher education over the past several years, and reports of specifications grading and other alternative grading systems are emerging in the chemistry education literature. The general goal of these alternative grading approaches is to reduce the reliance on high-stakes exams and give students a more transparent pathway to achieving the course learning outcomes. More importantly, relying less on infrequent high-stakes exams may help reduce historical equity gaps in introductory gateway STEM courses. Herein, we describe the implementation of two versions of mastery grading systems in large enrollment general chemistry courses at a public R1 institution. Class-wide course outcomes, equity gaps in performance on a common final exam, and student feedback on their experience navigating these grading schemes are presented. We show that combining mastery grading with interactive courseware tools improved the average performance on a common final assessment for under-represented minority (URM) students by 7.1 percentage points relative to an active control course that used infrequent high-stakes exams.
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Board 305: HSI Implementation and Evaluation Project: Commitment to Learning Instilled by Mastery-Based Undergraduate Program (CLIMB-UP)
This is a board presentation at the 2023 ASEE Annual Conference describing the HSI Implementation and Evaluation Project: Commitment to Learning Instilled by Mastery-Based Undergraduate Program (CLIMB-UP). Commitment to Learning Instilled by a Mastery-Based Undergraduate Program (CLIMBUP) is an NSF IUSE:HSI project centered on re-designing courses with high non-completion rates (C- or lower) that have implications towards students’ graduation, transfer ability and retention. Despite decades of effort to create active, inquiry-based learning practices in classrooms, our institution continues to see equity gaps and many required courses with noncompletion rates exceeding 50%. Grading practices have been identified as one of the main culprits in the persistence of equity gaps. As a Hispanic Serving Institution, we recognize and value the diversity of experience that our students bring to our campuses and are committed to utilizing their strengths by creating datadriven, equitable grading practices that give students space to take risks and bring alternative viewpoints to our classrooms and be rewarded. We believe a Mastery-Based Grading (MBG) approach can address problems that a traditional grading approach has caused. The CLIMB-UP project is building the infrastructure to support and train STEM faculty (both tenure-line and adjuncts) to redesign and teach a Mastery-Based Graded (MGB) course, and is conducting research on faculty experiences and on the change in student attitudes, mindsets, and outcomes.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2122941
- PAR ID:
- 10466744
- Publisher / Repository:
- 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
- Date Published:
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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