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).
Kate,
I was thinking about how to implement standards-based assessment in a thermodynamics course I’m teaching. I’m only getting stuck on the ability of students to request reassessment. I can see how important of a component that is, but how do you manage large numbers of students in that capacity? Do you find in practice that it just seems to work out?
Hi Vivek, we have a Google+ community devoted to questions like this. Please come and join us! https://plus.google.com/communities/117099673102877564377
Right now I have about 50 College Algebra students in total. I’m requiring them to make appointments at least 24-hours in advance of a re-assessment. Also, I’m only letting them attempt one standard per week. I’m hoping this cuts down on my workload. Additionally, I really want them to focus on one thing at a time. In the past I’ve had students come and attempt three or four re-assessments, and then only one works out. This creates a lot of extra work for both of us. It seems better to make them focus on one topic until they master it, and then move to another.
Hi Kate,
Thank you very much for writing this post – It has been helpful for me.
I was wondering if you would be willing to share some of your Calc II test and quiz questions? I will be teaching Calc II this semester – I am trying to decide whether to only implement SBG for weekly quizzes (where each quiz is its own standard, which seems simple) or to implement it similar to how you’ve described it in your syllabus (having 30 standards and putting them in quizzes and midterms).
Also, I am thinking of letting students correct their test/quiz work (with help from me or other people) to either get extra points back or earn the right to retake a quiz. Have you done something like this?