Fall 2020 Schedule

Carson Rogers will share his experience using a hybrid of traditional and mastery-based grading structures this term (details below).

We’ll also have time for reflections on your fall teaching, with a chance to share ideas and challenges and propose some concrete future actions.

Carson Rogers, Alternative Grading Structures

In teaching college mathematics, we have largely become accustomed to using point values earned on a few timed, high-pressure exams as our primary means of evaluating student understanding. However, does such a grading system truly align with our learning goals? Are we giving students the right incentives and necessary feedback to develop the depth of understanding that we want to see, and adequate opportunities to demonstrate that understanding? By focusing too much on these big exams, might we be excluding some students from showing us what they really know?

The difficult circumstances created by the COVID pandemic have certainly made such questions more pressing to think about than ever before. I will discuss how, after extensive reflection over the summer, I have been addressing these issues this semester through implementing a hybrid of traditional and mastery-based grading structures in teaching Math 1190. Attention will be drawn not only to the particulars of my current model, but the general design principles that can be applied to other college math courses. I plan to highlight what I see as the potential difficulties in adapting my model to a more typical math course, and leave plenty of room for discussing your questions in that regard.