Collaborative Research: HSI Implementation and Evaluation Project: Commitment to Learning Instilled by Mastery-Based Undergraduate Program

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Grading practices have been identified as one of the main culprits in the persistence of equity gaps. Traditional grading methods can be inequitable, ineffective, and even damaging to first-generation students, including Latinx students. To address this issue, a team of faculty from California State University, Los Angeles, in partnership with colleagues from East Los Angeles College and Pasadena City College, will work to transform student learning and assessment in second-year engineering courses. The project will develop and study a three-year professional development program to support the implementation of mastery-based grading, a form of grading that centers on two main concepts. First is that eventual mastery of the material is what counts, not artificial checkpoints during a term. Second is that multiple opportunities to show mastery should be available to students with no penalty for failed attempts. Mastery-based grading will be implemented at the aforementioned schools (three very-high enrolling Hispanic-serving institutions) with a goal of improving teaching and learning and promoting fundamental research on engaging student learning and engineering identity development. That research effort will be led by the portion of the project team at Arizona State University. The project will begin with a course redesign phase in which faculty will receive instruction in restructuring courses for mastery grading through a course redesign process. Faculty will then pilot the redesigned courses in the following semester, allowing for additional fine tuning of the redesign. Additional faculty will be brought into the redesigned courses, after being trained on the use of mastery-grading while engaged in an ongoing, cross-institutional faculty learning community. An embedded, student-centered research effort will investigate whether participation in a mastery-based learning environment shifts first-generation college students’ academic motivation, mindset, and attitudes over time.Three goals will guide this project. First is to redesign courses using mastery-based grading to improve rates of transfer and course completion for sophomore engineering “gateway” courses. Second is to foster and measure shifts in student attitudes towards learning, confidence as learners, and engineering identity. Third is to create a sustainable, multi-institutional faculty learning community and professional development program for faculty to utilize mastery-based grading. Project research will advance understanding of the effect that mastery-based grading has on post-secondary engineering students. It will advance understanding of how the new learning environment impacts first-generation college engineering students’ achievement motivation, affective state, identity development, mindsets about their abilities to learn, and persistence beliefs (i.e., academic profiles). Achievement goal theory is a prominent theoretical framework in achievement motivation, yet there is a dearth of research using this framework within the context of a predominantly minority student population. This project will fill this gap by empirically examining first-generation college students’ achievement motivation and advance understanding of how first-generation college students’ achievement motivations support the development of their engineering identity. Major data sources include student surveys, student and faculty interviews, and examination of student outcomes in the transformed courses. In addition to dissemination through conference presentations and journal publications, a hybrid faculty development course for using Mastery-Based Grading will be developed and made available to project faculty and disseminated to facilitate broader adoption. The Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI Program) aims to enhance undergraduate STEM education, broaden participation in STEM, and build capacity at HSIs. Achieving these aims, given the diverse nature and context of the HSIs, requires innovative approaches that incentivize institutional and community transformation and promote fundamental research (i) on engaged student learning, (ii) about what it takes to diversify and increase participation in STEM effectively, and (iii) that improves our understanding of how to build institutional capacity at HSIs. Projects supported by the HSI Program will also draw from these approaches to generate new knowledge on how to achieve these aims.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.