Standards Based Grading (SBG), what is it? Let me just say that SBG is a different way of thinking about grades. In Standards Based Grading, the main idea is that the grade is a measure of what students understand. It is not a measure of how well the students are obedient and it is not a measure of how much effort the students put into homework.
Now, just to be clear, I am not an expert on SBG. If SBG were a science, I would be an SBG engineer. If you want an expert, try Andy Rundquist or Shawn Cornally (and others too). But anyway, it seems like the popular thing to do right now is to share notes about how I implemented SBG this semester. Really, these are notes for myself as well as others.
The Setting
This semester, I had 4 classes. I used SBG in 3 of them. The non-SBG class was a physical science class for non-science majors. Why didn't I use SBG here? Mostly because I feel you should only change one thing at a time. In this class, I was using a new curriculum. It isn't very wise to change curriculum AND grading. The curriculum in this case was the Learning Physical Science materials. The basic idea is to have students in large lecture classes have a type of inquiry by watching videos of experiments and then answering conceptual questions. Overall, I think it works quite well (but not as well as an actual hands-on class in with smaller enrollment).
The other three courses were: intro calc-based physics part I and II (both using Matter and Interactions) and the second semester of advanced mechanics. The two intro courses were larger (30-60 students) but the advanced class was quite small.
The Basic Details
For both of my introductory classes, I use the following method for assessments.
- Each chapter has about 1-2 standards listed and posted online. I will something about this in a bit.
- About once a week, I give a short (1-2 question) test in class. These are graded and returned to the students.
- After the in-class assessment, students have the option of submitting a screen cast that shows they understand that concept. The screencast should be under 5 minutes long and must be submitted within 2 weeks of the in-class assessment (I stole this from Andy).
- If a student has turned in a screencast within the two week window, they can continue to re-submit screencasts for this standard for the rest of the semester.
Simple, right?
Screencast Assessments
The first time I allowed students to be reassessed on a standard, I had them come in my office and work a problem on the board. This was mostly painful. Painful because sometimes they would get stuck and sometimes there would be a line of students waiting to do something in class. It was also painful because I would usually pick the problem for them to solve - so I had to keep some problems on hand for them to work on. Also, I always had trouble keeping my mouth shut and letting the student work through the problem without interference.
The screencasts solve most of these problems. My first thought was that screencasts wouldn't work. Couldn't a student just look up a solution and make a screencast to give the mere appearance of understanding? Try it and you will see. Have students make a screencast of a worked out example in the book. You will probably be surprised how easily you can tell if they understand what they are talking about or not - even though the solution is RIGHT IN FRONT of them. So, it works pretty well. It is also easy to see if someone is reading from a script (pretty sure this happened a couple of times).
All that I really require is that the student submit a link to a screencast that shows they understand a particular example. They pick the problem. If the problem is too trivial, I won't give them the full score for that standard since they haven't demonstrated they have mastered it. Oh, and it doesn't have to be a Khan Academy type screen cast. Actually, I recommend that they solve a problem on paper and take a picture of it with their phone. For the screen cast, they just use the image of the paper solution on their screen and talk about it. This works well enough and is the most flexible in terms of required equipment. Some students just use their phone to video record them going over a paper solution. The nice thing here is that they can then upload the video straight to youtube. No computer required.
Here is a sample screencast I show my students.
That wasn't really a physics screencast, it was just an example. Just so we are clear. Oh, there is one more thing about videos. If the students upload to youtube, there is the option to play the recording at 1.5 or 2.0 speed. Very helpful.
Opt In
I like the idea of standards based grading and also the idea of students submitting all of their assessments as screencasts. But there is a problem. Some students think this is super crazy. Some students think they shouldn't have to use a computer. Well, maybe they are correct. So, each week there is an in-class assessment. That short test counts for your grade if that is what you want.
If the students want to improve their scores, they will need to submit a screencast. Simple.
Making Standards
If you are going to assess standards, you have to tell the students what each standard is all about. It is very tempting to make very specific standards. Here is the way I would originally like to do this:
- Vectors 1.1: I can write a vector as both a magnitude and a direction or in component form and I can switch between the two.
- Vectors 1.2: I can add and subtract multiple vectors.
- Vectors 1.3: I can find the magnitude, and unit vector for a vector.
- Vectors 1.4: More vector stuff....stuff...
You get the idea. We (as physics coaches) really know all the things we want the students to be able to do. The problem is assessing all these standards. How do you do it? Do you have the students create 4 different videos for each of these items? Do you give 4 different questions on an in class test? Really, that isn't going to work. If you do it in class, you will spend the whole time trying to hit all the elements. So, I opted for something simpler. For instance, here are a two standards for one chapter:
- 5.1 I can use the momentum principle for different case including cases involving objects moving in circles.
- 5.2 I can use the momentum principle to find unknown forces for an object in equilibrium or moving with a known acceleration.
Really, I could make two questions covering these two standards. It wouldn't be too difficult. You could probably just make one standard per chapter, that should work too.
More Requirements on Video Screencasts
I guess I shouldn't call them "screencasts" since it is usually just a picture of a solution on a piece of paper. However, one other requirement for videos is that students have to have at least two other students review them first. The idea is that they can all learn from each other. They also need practice evaluating explanations. Really, it is win-win.
The problem is that I don't have a nice (meaning easy) way of checking that students have their videos peer reviewed before they send them to me. I suspect that some of them just skip this part. The cool thing is that often students will just post the videos to youtube as a public video. They are pleased to find that other students (from somewhere else in the world) viewed their screencast and found it helpful.
In the future, I would love to do something cool. What if somehow students checked over each other's videos. Then, I would look at the ones that were controversial or something like that. The other problem is that in a class of 60 students, I can get a lot of videos (all at one time). What if some of the students were "promoted" to filter out the videos. They could easily tell which ones were not yet at the mastery level and then just give them some quick feedback. That would be cool.
Open Standards
In an effort to encourage students to work on cool stuff, I have a couple of open standards. These are essentially anything the students want to work on that isn't already a standard. This is where I encourage the students to try some of the vpython exercises. For our course, the students aren't required to be in the lab at the same time (same semester) as the lecture class. This means that often they won't get the vpython stuff (especially if I am not teaching the lab). That makes them perfect for extra standards.
Management Issues
I have trouble getting to all the videos. I don't give very detailed feedback - mostly because I lack the time. What I try to do is to move all the screencast videos to a special email folder. Then I try to grade them all on Fridays. I really like Andy's idea of having the students submit assessments within two weeks of some start date. I tell them that they just need to submit anything on that standard within the two weeks. If they do submit something, they can continue to re-re-submit until the end of the semester. The idea is to get the ball rolling so they don't wait until the last minute. Yes, I know this technically goes against my policy of "the grade is just a reflection of what they know" - but it is mostly for my sanity.
Surprisingly, I have yet to see a student turn in a first re-assessment at the last minute that just said "I am so lost, here is a problem and I have no idea what to do." If they did, I would accept it as a low score standard and let them fix it for the rest of the semester.
