Charity Lovitt

SCHOOL AFFILIATION: School of STEM
EMAIL: lovittc@uw.edu

What goals prompted you to apply specification grading?

Preparation for general chemistry helps students prepare to take the high stress chemistry sequence. This course generally has a high DFW rate despite several supports built in (collaborative team learning, low stakes assessment)
Students need to master specific skills in order to move into the next course.
By setting clear expectations for minimum thresholds (2.0), the goal was to make it clear what students needed to do in order to meet the minimum threshold in order to move on to the next course.

Instructor Developed contract.

I learned that it is important NOT to set thresholds too high. Learning Tasks were expected to be perfect, which was unrealistic and led to a lot of frustration.
In future versions, tasks were graded on a rubric scale, an 80% or higher counted for the task.
Students were very stressed to NOT see a final grade in Canvas gradebook, using specifications as bins and providing percentages helped alleviate stress in later classes.
My class is based on POGIL pedagogy so I split the participation into personal participation through learning reflections and team collaboration assignments.Collaboration assignments had unlimited attempts while participation was one time only. Splitting collaboration helped to emphasize the importance of teamwork for their learning.

Nilson, Linda B. Specifications Grading: Restoring rigor, motivating students, and saving faculty time.

Developing and Implementing a Specifications Grading System in an Organic Chemistry Laboratory Course

William J. Howitz, Kate J. McKnelly, and Renée D. Link

Journal of Chemical Education 2021 98 (2), 385-394

DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.0c00450

Mai Yin Tsoi

Georgia Gwinnett College

Edited by Shawn Simonsen

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