Reimagining Grading to Support Nontraditional and Rural Students in High Enrollment, Gateway STEM Courses

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This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). Common classroom practices, such as grading and the use of grades to assess knowledge and performance, may have unintended consequences on students who invariably derive an awareness of their own academic abilities from the results of those grading structures. In fact, these traditional practices may inadvertently create and promote inequities among different student groups, particularly in large enrollment courses, but these issues have largely been unexplored. This postdoctoral research fellowship project seeks to examine the impact of grading practices on self-concept and STEM persistence with a special focus on rural and nontraditional students. The project has promise to produce new insights about equitable classroom and grading practices for rural and nontraditional students that are compatible with the constraints of high enrollment gateway courses. In addition to conducting the research project, the investigator will build STEM education research capacity in quantitative methods and approaches through an explicit professional development plan.This project's research hypothesis is that nontraditional and rural students are especially vulnerable to the limitations of traditional grading when used in high enrollment, gateway STEM courses. The investigator will use a mixed-methods, community-based participatory research approach with three objectives. First is to explore the relationship between grading structures and nontraditional and rural students’ self-concept and intentions to persist in high enrollment, gateway STEM courses. Second is to characterize how aspects of traditional and alternative grading schemes influence nontraditional and rural students’ academic self-concept and intentions to persist in STEM. Third is to develop empirically supported approaches of equitable grading strategies that are conducive to high enrollment STEM classrooms and are particularly supportive for rural students and students that identify as nontraditional. The findings could provide faculty with practical assessment and grading approaches to address the systemic inequitable practices associated with grading and create more equitable learning environments for students broadly.The project responds to the STEM Education Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (STEM Ed PRF) program that aims to enhance the research knowledge, skills, and practices of recent doctorates in STEM, STEM education, education, and related disciplines to advance their preparation to engage in fundamental and applied research that advances knowledge within the field.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.