{"id":1049,"date":"2015-11-20T00:01:07","date_gmt":"2015-11-20T05:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/matheducation\/?p=1049"},"modified":"2015-11-15T19:36:18","modified_gmt":"2015-11-16T00:36:18","slug":"a-beginners-guide-to-standards-based-grading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/matheducation\/2015\/11\/20\/a-beginners-guide-to-standards-based-grading\/","title":{"rendered":"A Beginner\u2019s Guide to Standards Based Grading"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Kate Owens<\/a>, Instructor, Department of Mathematics, College of Charleston<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

In the past, I was frustrated with grades. Usually they told me very little about what a student did or didn\u2019t know. Also, my students didn\u2019t always know what topics they understood and on what topics they needed more work. Aside from wanting to do well on a cumulative final exam, students had very little incentive to look back on older topics. Through many conversations on Twitter, I learned about Standards Based Grading (SBG) and I implemented an SBG system in several consecutive semesters of Calculus II. <\/span><\/p>\n

The goal of SBG is to shift the focus of grades from a weighted average of scores earned on various assignments to a measure of mastery of individual learning targets related to the content of the course. Instead of informing a student of their grade on a particular assignment, a standards-based grade aims to reflect that student\u2019s level of understanding of key concepts or standards. Additionally, students are invited to improve their course standing by demonstrating growth in their skills or understanding as they see fit. In this article I will explain the way I implemented SBG and describe some benefits and some drawbacks of this method of assessment.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"BwZTOdbIEAAr9sE\"<\/a>Image: <\/span><\/i>The Integrity of the Grade, courtesy of Dr. Justin Tarte, @justintarte<\/span><\/i><\/a><\/p>\n

I chose Calculus II to try an SBG approach because it was my first time teaching the course, so I could build my materials from the ground up. Also, unlike several other courses I teach, the student count remains low — approximately 25 per section. Before the start of the semester, I created a list of thirty course \u201cstandards\u201d or learning goals. Roughly, each goal corresponded to one section of the textbook. I organized the thirty standards around six Big Questions that I felt were the heart of the course material. One Big Question was, \u201cWhat does it mean to add together infinitely many numbers?\u201d The list of standards served as answers to these Big Questions. <\/span>\u00a0The list of standards and a description of the grading system were distributed to the students on the first day of class. During the semester, students were given in-class assessments in the form of weekly quizzes, monthly examinations, and a cumulative final examination. The assignments themselves were similar to those found in courses using a traditional grading scheme, but they were assessed differently. Rather than track a student\u2019s total percentage on each particular assignment, for every problem I examined each student\u2019s response and then assigned a score to one or more associated course standards. I provided suggested homework problems both from the textbook and using an online homework platform, but homework did not factor directly into a student\u2019s grade. Instead, if I noticed a student needed more practice at a particular sort of problem, I would direct her to the associated homework problems for additional practice.<\/span><\/p>\n

During in-class assessments, a single <\/span>quiz or exam<\/span> question asking a student to determine if an infinite series converged might also require the student to demonstrate knowledge of (a) \u201cThe Integral Test<\/span>,<\/span>\u201d a strategy for determining if a series converges or diverges; (b) \u201cImproper Integrals<\/span>,<\/span>\u201d the process used to evaluate integrals over an infinite interval; (c) some method of integration, such as \u201cIntegration by Parts,\u201d and (d) some prior knowledge about how to evaluate limits learned earlier in Calculus I. For each of these concepts, I assign a different score (on a 0-4 scale), roughly correlated with a GPA or letter-grade system. During the semester, I tracked how well each student did on each of the thirty standards. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Since some standards appeared in a multitude of questions throughout the semester, a student\u2019s current score on a standard was computed as the average of the student\u2019s most recent two attempts. Outside of class, each student could re-attempt up to one course standard per week. Usually these re-attempts occurred during office hours and were in the form of a one- or two-question quiz. My rationale for continually updating student scores is that I want grades to reflect a <\/span>current<\/span><\/i> level of understanding since I want students to aim for a continued mastery of course topics. \u00a0\u00a0Over the course of the semester, their scores on standards can move up or down several times. Students are motivated to continue reviewing old material since they know that they might be assessed on those ideas again and their previous grades could go in either direction.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the end of the term, each student had scores on approximately thirty course standards. To determine a student\u2019s letter grade, I used the following system:<\/span><\/p>\n