The list of standards and a description of the grading system were distributed to the students on the first day of class. One Big Question was, “What does it mean to add together infinitely many numbers?” The list of standards served as answers to these Big Questions. I organized the thirty standards around six Big Questions that I felt were the heart of the course material. Roughly, each goal corresponded to one section of the textbook. Before the start of the semester, I created a list of thirty course “standards” or learning goals. Also, unlike several other courses I teach, the student count remains low - approximately 25 per section. Justin Tarte, 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. Image: The Integrity of the Grade, courtesy of Dr. In this article I will explain the way I implemented SBG and describe some benefits and some drawbacks of this method of assessment. Additionally, students are invited to improve their course standing by demonstrating growth in their skills or understanding as they see fit. Instead of informing a student of their grade on a particular assignment, a standards-based grade aims to reflect that student’s level of understanding of key concepts or standards. 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. 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. ![]() Aside from wanting to do well on a cumulative final exam, students had very little incentive to look back on older topics. Also, my students didn’t always know what topics they understood and on what topics they needed more work. ![]() Usually they told me very little about what a student did or didn’t know. In the past, I was frustrated with grades. By Kate Owens, Instructor, Department of Mathematics, College of Charleston
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