Today was the first day of our new semester. This spring, I’ll be teaching two sections of “Calculus I” and one section of “Calculus II.” I feel like “Calculus I” is basically on autopilot; I’ve taught the class every semester for the last couple years and so I’m very comfortable with the course content. But this will be my first time teaching “Calculus II” in many years. (I think the last time I taught it was 2006 or so, at the University of South Carolina, using an entirely different textbook.) I’ve decided that I want to try something different & I am embarking on my first attempt at Standards Based Grading (SBG) — or as someone suggested today on twitter, maybe Standards Based Learning (SBL) is more appropriate?
Why Am I Doing This?
For the last few years, I’ve noticed a few things about traditional grading (TG) that I did not like. One thing that has bothered me is that a student can go the entire semester without ever solving a problem 100% correctly, yet still do very well in the course. For example, it is entirely possible to earn a “B+” grade, by performing pretty well on everything, but never really and truly mastering a single topic or problem type. I hope that Standards Based Grading helps me motivate my students to really try to master specific sorts of problems, rather than try to bounce around, hoping they can earn enough “partial credit” points to propel them to success. Really, I want to reward a student who gets four problems absolutely correct (and skips two problems) more than a student who just writes jumbled stuff down on every page. I think SBG will allow me to do this.
Another (related) thing that has bothered me: The point of calculus class is not to earn as many points as possible, doing the least effort possible. I will admit that I have used a TG scheme for years and years; I have no idea how many college-level courses I’ve taught. And I am pretty sure that I can look at a calculus quiz question, assign it a score between 0 and 10, and accurately give a number close to what my colleagues would give for that same problem. We might all agree, “Okay, this solution is worth 7 out of 10 points for these reasons.” But I think this gives the students the idea that the reason they should study is to earn points on the quiz — after all, 9 points is better than 7 points! Instead, I think the reason they should study is to understand the material deeper than they presently do now, and I think by assigning X points out of 100 sends them the wrong message.
Something that has really bothered me recently is that when a student is struggling with the course, I am never entirely sure what to tell them. I look up their grades in my gradebook; I see that they have an average of 62%; and then I try to give them advice. But what advice should I give? The 62% in my gradebook does not tell me very much: I do not know if this student is struggling because they need more practice in trigonometry. Or maybe they were doing very well, but bombed our last test because they got some bad news the night before. Or maybe they got L’Hopital’s Rule confused with the Quotient Rule. I want to be able to tell a student exactly what they can do to improve their understanding. By tracking each student’s mastery of particular standards, if a student comes to my office for extra help, I can tell that student, “Okay, it looks like you need extra help with [insert specific topic].”
Lastly, I would like to give students more low-stakes feedback about their understanding: That is, feedback without the worry that it will negatively affect their grade in the class. I will be giving a weekly quiz, and I will grade it, offer feedback, and return it to my students; then (eventually) their score on that standard can be replaced with a newer [hopefully better!] score. I will constantly replace their previous score on a standard with their current score on a standard. This way, if they are really struggling with (say) Taylor polynomials, I can communicate this to them early, they can seek extra help and resources, and then they can be re-assessed without penalty for their original lack of understanding.
What Worries Me?
I have lots of different things worrying me about this system! For example, since this is my first time teaching Calculus II in many years, I don’t know all the “common pitfalls” that my students will encounter, so I don’t feel like I’m going to see them coming until they’re already here. Also, I am worried that students will struggle to understand this method of assessment & won’t really “get it” about how they are doing in the course — or won’t take the opportunity to re-assess when they need it. Lastly, despite reading online that “before a course begins, start by making a list of what you want them to master (a.k.a, the standards)” I was unable to do this. I have the first half (or so), but I don’t know how good they are. Am I being too vague? Am I being too specific? Do I have too many? Too few? How difficult will they be to assess?
Some Resources
In my own course planning, here are links to resources I found helpful:
- Prof. George McNulty (Univ. of South Carolina & my PhD advisor) has a great Calculus II syllabus. He uses a semi-SBG system and has some great “Core” problems on his syllabus, too: http://www.math.sc.edu/~mcnulty/142/142syllabus.pdf
- Shawn Cornally has some helpful things on “Why SBG?” and “How SBG?” on his website; see http://shawncornally.com/wordpress/?page_id=114 for general info & http://shawncornally.com/wordpress/?p=673 for an SBG Q&A
- And I owe thanks to Joshua Bowman (@Thalesdisciple) for entertaining my many, many e-mail questions and for his blog: http://thalestriangles.blogspot.com/search/label/sbg
- Lastly, not at all SBG related, but it was in my bookmarks folder & kept me happy and fed while I was doing course prep: A recipe for zucchini bread.
Wish me luck!