Student reflections on standards-based graded assignments

Abstract

Standards-based grading (SBG) provides students with feedback on their achievement of specific course learning objectives. What training students need to make meaning of and plan to act on this feedback is not known. This work in progress took place in a required first-year engineering course in which a SBG system is used. Following two problem, students were asked to respond to reflection prompts concerning their beliefs about their learning, how representative their learning objective based feedback was of their learning, and the actions they planned to take as a result of their feedback. Initial findings suggest that students do not engage in deep thinking on the feedback, though students' ability to reflect or the nature of the reflective prompts and their timing may also have had an impact on the depth of students' reflections. Pairing instruction on reflection and interpretation of SBG feedback is presented as a strategy to overcome the lack of deep thinking on SBG feedback and improve the quality of the reflection data.