Changing grading to encourage learning

David W Bollivar, Michael P Manzella

The standard grading practices that many of us learned under have been demonstrated to fall short in supporting student learning. These antiquated practices encourage memorization over understanding, fail to measure the understanding of students, and often pit participants against instructors. We employed a newer approach, specifications-based grading, in a phage discovery course that was taught as a three unit CURE experience. The poster will describe the rationale for the approach, the structure and workflow of the semester, the optimization of assignment rubrics, the students’ response to the system, and a professor’s perspective.