This afternoon I’ll be presenting about standards based grading as part of Teaching, Learning and Technology‘s “Faculty Showcase.” I’ll be giving a similar talk at an upcoming conference. In case you’re interested, here are some documents related to my presentations:
- Slides of my presentation
- A copy of my “Calculus II” course syllabus for the current semester (Spring 2015). This contains the “syllabus language” for how I explain my method of assessment for the course.
- A copy of my Standards List for “Calculus II”, grouped by Big Questions
- A “Frequently Asked Questions” document for students.
A lot of my FAQ document was borrowed from Joshua Bowman (@Thalesdisciple). This semester, I didn’t actually give my students the FAQ document — It turned out that after three semesters of SBG, my explanation to students about how our grading system works & why I think it’s a good idea has gotten a lot better.
Actually, that point speaks to one of the great things I’ve gotten out of using SBG: Implementing my system forced me to give deep consideration to exactly what mathematical content I want my students to get out of the course. Instead of debating if homework should count 10% or 12% of the overall grade, or what I should do if a student misses a quiz for an undocumented reason, or other administrative policies like those, the SBG system made my entire course planning process focus on the math stuff I want to teach and assess — instead of worrying about policies unrelated to mathematics (compliance with the rules, attendance, percentage breakdowns, etc).