I'm surprised "time" isn't one of these. I like the *idea* of mastery-based learning. But I'm tenured engineering faculty and have >60 students across two classes, one of which is core, and I'm always behind on grading and feedback as it is. I only have one undergrad grader to help in one of those courses and I do a lot of projects and writing. To enable revisions in my elective, I had to cut the number of different reports in half. But the idea of accomplishing even more grading and feedback in my core class feels impossible. And they need practice solving problems so I don't want to cut those. I love the concept. But I cannot imagine having time to accomplish this. I'd love any suggestions for how to implement this in a way that doesn't require me to spend MORE time grading and giving feedback.
Yeah, this is definitely a concern I hear -- it just didn't fit the theme of this post as well as the others. :)
It sounds like you're thinking along the right lines, which is that it's essential to cut back to the most essential standards and streamline assessments. That can be painful to do, but is well worth it (the pandemic forced that on a lot of us, and I'm thankful for it... in retrospect only).
I find that there are a lot of things that are *important*, but don't need to be *assessed*. For example, I use pre-class prep assignments in a flipped class structure, but I don't grade those in any meaningful way. That leaves more time for feedback on the most important assessments.
In addition, choosing an appropriate structure for reassessments can help. For example, when I teach more introductory classes, I *only* use regularly scheduled quizzes and homework. There's no reassessing in between their due dates, rather, new attempts appear on later assignments. That helps me (and students) plan out the workload.
There are a lot of discussions in our book and on this blog about specific ways to streamline. What will work for you depends on your situation. But I will say that I'm also tenured and often have a similar number of students (60 across 2-3 classes) and can definitely make it work!
Thank you for this post. I've used versions of these over the years in conversations with my colleagues, and it's always nice to have more perspectives to share or an easy blog to link to!
Another reaction I've heard that I don't have a great answer to is along the lines of "if students have x standards to complete, they'll just learn them to meet the standard and brain dump as soon as they have." Here they were talking about a model where students quiz to show proficiency in an objective, with a certain number of objectives met translating to each final grade level.
My feeling is that this isn't the case, since the learning to meet a stand is typically deeper than to study for a traditional quiz or test, and that in traditional classes brain dumping is likely worse. That's more about saying traditional is bad too though, not really that alternative assessment doesn't have the problem.
I'd be interested to hear if others have a good refutation here.
Yeah, I've also heard that one. It's true, but not helpful, to say that cram-and-dump is also a strategy for traditional grades. I think a good counter-argument would be built on two things:
1. The standard for meeting an objective is very high, so a "shotgun" type answer is unlikely to be good enough, and
2. Students who don't meet an objective don't just leave it alone, but rather come back to it and continue studying, which is essentially a well-established learning technique (spaced repetition).
Related to those, I usually require students to demonstrate proficiency twice per objective, and ensure those assessments are spaced out throughout the semester (including some required reattempts for "core" objectives on the final exam). That ensures that a single brain dump isn't enough, and also generally isn't practical.
Students internationally are given a lot of time to master material before being tested on it, a key benefit of relying exclusively on end of course assessments. American style continuous assessment results in students being continuously tested on recently learnt material, a huge disadvantage. If one wants to test more frequently, retakes give students the extra time to master the content that their international counterparts get.
When it comes to "real world" arguments, does every single subject have to be some proxy for generic life skills? So we can never focus on the best way to learn chemistry or math because every single subject has to be a contrived reflection of what someone perceives to be a real world environment? It should be OK for math to be math and universities to offer other experiences which try to be a closer reflection of the working environment.
I'm surprised "time" isn't one of these. I like the *idea* of mastery-based learning. But I'm tenured engineering faculty and have >60 students across two classes, one of which is core, and I'm always behind on grading and feedback as it is. I only have one undergrad grader to help in one of those courses and I do a lot of projects and writing. To enable revisions in my elective, I had to cut the number of different reports in half. But the idea of accomplishing even more grading and feedback in my core class feels impossible. And they need practice solving problems so I don't want to cut those. I love the concept. But I cannot imagine having time to accomplish this. I'd love any suggestions for how to implement this in a way that doesn't require me to spend MORE time grading and giving feedback.
Yeah, this is definitely a concern I hear -- it just didn't fit the theme of this post as well as the others. :)
It sounds like you're thinking along the right lines, which is that it's essential to cut back to the most essential standards and streamline assessments. That can be painful to do, but is well worth it (the pandemic forced that on a lot of us, and I'm thankful for it... in retrospect only).
I find that there are a lot of things that are *important*, but don't need to be *assessed*. For example, I use pre-class prep assignments in a flipped class structure, but I don't grade those in any meaningful way. That leaves more time for feedback on the most important assessments.
In addition, choosing an appropriate structure for reassessments can help. For example, when I teach more introductory classes, I *only* use regularly scheduled quizzes and homework. There's no reassessing in between their due dates, rather, new attempts appear on later assignments. That helps me (and students) plan out the workload.
There are a lot of discussions in our book and on this blog about specific ways to streamline. What will work for you depends on your situation. But I will say that I'm also tenured and often have a similar number of students (60 across 2-3 classes) and can definitely make it work!
Thank you for this post. I've used versions of these over the years in conversations with my colleagues, and it's always nice to have more perspectives to share or an easy blog to link to!
Another reaction I've heard that I don't have a great answer to is along the lines of "if students have x standards to complete, they'll just learn them to meet the standard and brain dump as soon as they have." Here they were talking about a model where students quiz to show proficiency in an objective, with a certain number of objectives met translating to each final grade level.
My feeling is that this isn't the case, since the learning to meet a stand is typically deeper than to study for a traditional quiz or test, and that in traditional classes brain dumping is likely worse. That's more about saying traditional is bad too though, not really that alternative assessment doesn't have the problem.
I'd be interested to hear if others have a good refutation here.
Thanks!
Yeah, I've also heard that one. It's true, but not helpful, to say that cram-and-dump is also a strategy for traditional grades. I think a good counter-argument would be built on two things:
1. The standard for meeting an objective is very high, so a "shotgun" type answer is unlikely to be good enough, and
2. Students who don't meet an objective don't just leave it alone, but rather come back to it and continue studying, which is essentially a well-established learning technique (spaced repetition).
Related to those, I usually require students to demonstrate proficiency twice per objective, and ensure those assessments are spaced out throughout the semester (including some required reattempts for "core" objectives on the final exam). That ensures that a single brain dump isn't enough, and also generally isn't practical.
Students internationally are given a lot of time to master material before being tested on it, a key benefit of relying exclusively on end of course assessments. American style continuous assessment results in students being continuously tested on recently learnt material, a huge disadvantage. If one wants to test more frequently, retakes give students the extra time to master the content that their international counterparts get.
When it comes to "real world" arguments, does every single subject have to be some proxy for generic life skills? So we can never focus on the best way to learn chemistry or math because every single subject has to be a contrived reflection of what someone perceives to be a real world environment? It should be OK for math to be math and universities to offer other experiences which try to be a closer reflection of the working environment.