Mastery Grading Research Articles

Implementing Mastery Grading in Large Enrollment General Chemistry: Improving Outcomes and Reducing Equity Gaps

Implementing Mastery Grading in Large Enrollment General Chemistry: Improving Outcomes and Reducing Equity Gaps

Introduction to the Special Issue on Implementing Mastery Grading in the Undergraduate Mathematics Classroom

This editorial serves as an introduction to the Special Issue on Implementing Mastery Grading in the Undergraduate Mathematics Classroom. We provide a broad introduction to mastery grading and describe articles in this special issue that provide a wide range of implementations of mastery grading in a variety of undergraduate mathematics classrooms. We conclude by identifying additional resources available to new practitioners, and describing ideas for future work related to mastery grading. We hope this special issue will serve as a resource for both experienced practitioners and those who wish to begin using mastery grading.

Alternative grading practices: An entry point for faculty in competency‐based education

AbstractDue to a lack of buy‐in from multiple stakeholder groups, institutions of higher learning may struggle to reorient their entire course and program offerings to embrace the full breadth of competency‐based education. One such way of overcoming these systematic issues to make incremental progress toward competency‐based education is to consider practices such as grading that single professors can implement without the need of full institutional support. Few college instructors are likely to have received any formal grading training. As such, they may rely on institutional norms and their personal experiences as students. In response to historical grading challenges in higher education, some faculty members have adopted models working against the status quo such as mastery grading, specifications grading, and standards‐based grading, which all promote students demonstrating their learning on criterion‐referenced tests in a more flexible time frame. The purpose of this paper is to describe alternative forms of grading as an entry point for faculty incrementally progressing toward competency‐based education axioms in higher education. The authors recommend a multiple‐step course design framework and areas for future research.

Second Chance Grading: An Equitable, Meaningful, and Easy-to-Implement Grading System that Synergizes the Research on Testing for Learning, Mastery Grading, and Growth Mindsets

ABSTRACT This article describes the synthesis of the research on mastery grading, growth mindsets, and testing for learning to produce a new grading system – Second Chance Grading. The system and the research it is based on are described in detail. Reflections of the system's effectiveness, impact, and reception are also discussed. Finally, the appendix to the article contains an F.A.Q. section addressing some of the common questions and concerns related to the system.

Developing Professional Mindset with Mastery Grading

Quantitative Reasoning for Professionals is a two-semester general education sequence that teaches basic and intermediate algebra through the lens of quantitative reasoning. In this course sequence, we emphasize communication and inference-making while teaching practical algebra skills for students in programs such as business, nursing, and social work. Students placing into this course sequence are statistically at-risk to drop out of college, and our experience indicates that lacking college-readiness skills are a primary factor in this risk. We created a mastery grading system that was specifically designed to promote skills and habits of mind that are associated with retention. With a view toward our pre-professional student audience, we framed these outcomes in the context of a “professional mindset.” In this paper, we present the specifics of the professional mindset outcome and the context that led to its definition. We describe the specifics of our grading system and informally report on its failures and successes in promoting a professional mindset in our students.

Mastering Your Sales Pitch: Selling Mastery Grading to Your Students and Yourself

When contemplating the introduction of mastery grading into the classroom, a fear of student resistance can prevent the implementation entirely. However, by taking a proactive stance against student resistance, instructors can give mastery grading the best chance of being successful. This paper focuses on the ways in which the instructor can properly motivate students and themselves in the mastery grading process. By motivating mastery grading, student resistance to the technique will hopefully be lessened and the result will be a positive mastery grading experience for both the instructor and students.

Techniques Grading: Mastery Grading for Proofs Courses

Mastery grading is an approach to grading in which students are assigned term grades based on whether they meet certain enumerated objectives, rather than accumulating points. In this note, I describe my experiences using a mastery system, which I call techniques grading, which applies the insights behind the standards-based and specifications grading flavors of mastery grading to a proof-intensive course. In techniques grading, each objective assesses, in a binary (pass/fail) way, whether a student has mastered a specific proof technique. I describe my implementation of this system in a transitions course and an undergraduate real-analysis course. I discuss how the system works: how I developed the grading objectives, how individual assignments are assessed, and the collation of each student's work into a final portfolio. I provide a theoretical assessment of techniques grading within the mastery grading framework, and some evidence from student surveys and my own impressions that the system meets its goals: improving the quality of student work; increasing student satisfaction; reducing grade-grubbing; and instilling mindfulness, good work practices, and pride.

Mastery Grading: Build-A-Syllabus Workshop

While you may be ready to make the change to implementing Mastery Grading, you may still wonder exactly how to do this. This paper seeks to compile recommendations on implementing mastery grading from various sources as well as examples from our own experiences. The reader should expect a detailed overview of the components involved in mastery grading as well as practical advice, such as guiding questions to consider before any implementation and a build-a-syllabus workshop to get started.

Simple Specifications Grading

Specifications grading is a version of mastery grading distinguished by giving students clear specifications that their work must meet, and grading most things pass/fail based on those specifications. Mastery grading systems can get quite elaborate, with hierarchies of objectives and various systems for rewriting and retesting. In this article I present and discuss the results of two relatively simple implementations of specs grading, one in a differential equations course, and one in a discrete math course that includes an introduction to proof writing. I highlight several novel aspects of my systems: a buy-in activity, a “catch-up” quiz, and an oral quiz option.

Rethinking Precalculus and Calculus: A Learner-Centered Approach

Like many math educators, I have spent much of my career bound to traditional methods of instruction and assessment. In recent years, motivated by a growing understanding that such approaches may not result in equitable or inclusive classroom environments, my teaching philosophy has shifted radically. In this article, I describe how I transformed my Precalculus and Calculus I courses, incorporating mastery grading, inquiry-based learning, and metacognitive and community building activities. I describe the motivation and philosophy behind the key components of these courses, the observed effect on student learning and attitudes, and my own responses to this new approach.

An Instructional Model for a Nonprescription Therapeutics Course

To design and implement curricular modifications to a nonprescription therapeutics course to better meet course objectives. Improvements included the addition of journaling, mastery grading, case studies, verbal examinations, educational mentors, and encouraging classroom participation. Student course evaluations and grades were used to assess the impact of the pedagogical modifications. Course grades indicated that students succeeded in learning at the set mastery level of 80%. Course evaluations indicated students responded positively to the course modifications. Ongoing curricular modifications ultimately resulted in a course that met established course objectives.

Applying Learner-Centered Principles in Teacher Education

Applying the Learner-Centered Psychological Principles(LCPs) in teacher preparation programs andcourses provides teacher educators with opportunitiesto model effective learner-centered practicesand promote student motivation and learning. Thisarticle addresses issues related to the applicationof the LCPs in higher education, specifically, thepromotion of self-regulated learning and the importanceof examining preservice teachers' beliefsregarding students, learning, and teaching. Learnercenteredinstructional practices in teacher educationcourses are suggested for each of the fourLCP factors/domains, including strategies forpromoting teacher reflection and knowledge construction,offering students choices, encouraging collaboration,and accommodating individual differencesthrough criterion-referenced mastery grading.

Mastery Grading to Serve Student Learning in the Middle Grades

and go over the course of the more than two centuries of American educational history. During this same period of time, however, there have been only two basic types of grading systems: comparative grading and mastery grading (Laska & Juarez, 1992). Both approaches to grading (which will be explained below) have had proponents and critics in what has been a long history of debate over how grading practices promote learning or, in some cases, impede learning and bring harm to students. In terms of actu al practice, comparative grading would appear to have won the debate because it is by far the predominant approach to grading used in American schools at all levels, including those at the middle level (Vars, 1992). Mastery grading was implemented in only a small number of schools in the early years of the twentieth century and was later abandoned except for isolated instances of its use in individual classrooms from time to

Normative and Mastery Grading: Continuing the Discussion

The controversy concerning the different grading poli cies employed now in high r education may be come destructive. There is much that is thoughtful and provocative in many of the contrasting positions, but harm is likely to occur if the debate is allowed to become sim plified into a kind of campaigning or proselytizing of re cruits to one or the other correct view. As happens so often in a controversy, lines seem to be forming. The re sults could be a quasi-political campaign of the Conserva tives (those who want no change in grading practices) against the Progressives (those who want to get rid of grading). Certainly, the image of educators feeling strong ly enough about an important issue to debate it in print is heartening. A review of the literature on grading policies and grade inflation is sobering, however, and calls to mind a recent cautionary note that professors often get overly critical, even virulent, in their critical writing (9). The danger may be that harshly worded criticisms may end constructive discussion of grading practices just when it is badly needed. When an issue works to divide profes sionals into rigid and opposing sides (the good guys against the bad guys) constructive discussion cannot be conducted. Debate becomes name-calling. The ensuing rush to gather adherents for one point of view or another obscures the fact that grading is a dilemma that every uni versity teacher faces. We who teach must recognize the commonality of the grading issue in our profession and join to work out constructive responses to the issue. We must strive to respond constructively to the intertwined ques tions of: What is the best for the learning and emotional health of our students? How best can we carry out the tasks that society has assigned to university education? Review of the recent literature indicates that further con structive discussion of grading should consider the follow ing points.

Psychoactive Drugs: A Course Evaluation

Evidence is presented concerning achievement of cognitive objectives in a college course on drugs. A mastery grading system insured that students learned to criterion. Reported experience with drugs did not change during the course and was unrelated to measures of learning and student ratings of the course and the instructors. Concern for friend's drug usage did increase and changes were observed in preferred sources of advice and information about drugs.