Evaluating the Effect of Alternative Grading Strategies on Goal Orientation, Motivation, Self-Efficacy, and Content Learning

评估替代评分策略对目标定向、动机、自我效能和内容学习的影响

• 批准号: 2321167
• 负责人: Karla Rivera Caceres
• 金额: $ 34.56万
• 依托单位: Florida International University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-10-01 至 2026-09-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2321167&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Evaluating; Effect; Alternative; Grading; Strategies

Increasingly, STEM educators seek alternatives to traditional grading strategies out of a concern that traditional ways of evaluating student work can undermine meaningful learning. For example, when professors assign points to assignments, students’ goals shift to achieving a high score instead of learning the content and skills provided in the course. Furthermore, grading has also been linked consistently with lower internal motivation, increased anxiety, and decreased self-awareness about levels of knowledge and skill. Alternative grading strategies have the potential to remove the harmful effect of grades by relying on clear mastery standards of specific learning outcomes, helpful feedback, and opportunity of reassessment without penalty. According to the theory of goal orientation, these features should shift students’ goals from performance (e.g., “I perform this task to do well in the course”) to mastery (e.g., “I perform this task because it helps me learn”). Although there are multiple reports that alternative grading efforts have a positive effect on motivation and risk taking, and there is a growing community of alternative grading advocates, evidence of the effect of alternative grading strategies on motivational beliefs, self-awareness and academic performance is scarce. It is especially important to study the effects of alternative grading in institutions with a high proportion of underrepresented students who could benefit the most from experiencing learning environments that promote these mindsets and skills. This project aims to explore whether adopting an alternative grading in college courses increases students’ mastery goal orientation, in turn affecting motivation, self-awareness, and content learning. This project is important because it has the potential to inform research-driven curriculum changes to high enrollment courses with the objective of decreasing student attrition in high-enrollment, Biology courses. This project is designed to explore how course grade structure affects students’ goal orientations, course motivation, metacognitive skills, and content learning. To do this, the researchers will focus on two high enrollment courses- General Biology II (lower division) and a Genetics course (upper division) at Florida International University (FIU), a Hispanic Serving institution. Two paired experiments that will compare sections with alternative grading structure with graded sections of each course will be performed to address five research questions. First, researchers will use a quantitative methods approach to measure students’ goal orientations and motivation at the beginning, middle and end of the courses. This experiment will address whether an alternative grading structure influences students’ goal orientation and whether there is a relationship between goal orientation and students’ motivation to perform class assignments. Second, researchers will apply an instrument to measure content knowledge and self-efficacy at the beginning and end of the courses. Structural equation modeling will be used to determine if content knowledge and self-efficacy improve in courses with alternative grading. Finally, researchers will determine whether under-prepared students are differentially affected by an alternative grading structure by using the data collected during both experiments and apply measures of educational preparation to determine if this variable improves model fit to the data. This is one of the first studies that addresses whether alternative grading structures have an impact on mastery goal orientations in students. Although, it is widely accepted that grades have a negative effect on internal motivation, anxiety, self-regulated learning, and content learning, it has been hard to prove that the absence of grades has the opposite effect. Goal orientation theory could explain why some students fail to benefit from an ungraded structure. This research will enhance our understanding of how pedagogy affects goal orientations in under-prepared students. Results can inform faculty in their course design to incorporate practices that can benefit students that need it the most. The project is supported by NSF’s EDU Core Research Building Capacity in STEM Education Research (ECR: BCSER) program, which is designed to build investigators’ capacity to carry out high-quality STEM education research.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.

STEM教育工作者越来越多地寻求传统评分策略的替代方案，因为他们担心传统的学生作业评估方法会破坏有意义的学习。例如，当教授给作业打分时，学生的目标就会转向获得高分，而不是学习课程中提供的内容和技能。此外，评分也一直与较低的内部动机，焦虑增加，以及对知识和技能水平的自我意识下降有关。替代评分策略有可能消除成绩的有害影响，依靠明确的掌握标准的具体学习成果，有益的反馈，并重新评估的机会，而不惩罚。根据目标导向理论，这些特征应该使学生的目标从表现转向目标（例如，“我执行这个任务是为了在课程中做得好”）到掌握（例如，“我执行这项任务，因为它有助于我学习”）。虽然有多个报告说，替代评分的努力有积极的影响，动机和风险承担，并有越来越多的社区替代评分倡导者，替代评分策略的影响动机信念，自我意识和学习成绩的证据是稀缺的。特别重要的是，要研究替代分级的影响，在机构中有很高比例的代表性不足的学生谁可以受益于体验学习环境，促进这些心态和技能的最大。本研究旨在探讨在大学课程中采用替代性评分是否会增加学生的掌握目标定向，进而影响动机，自我意识和内容学习。这个项目是重要的，因为它有可能通知研究驱动的课程变化，以减少学生在高招生，生物学课程的流失的目标高招生课程。 本研究旨在探讨课程等级结构如何影响学生的目标取向、课程动机、元认知技能和内容学习。为此，研究人员将专注于两个高招生课程-普通生物学II（低年级）和遗传学课程（高年级）在佛罗里达国际大学（FIU），西班牙裔服务机构。两个配对的实验，将比较部分的替代分级结构与分级部分的每门课程将被执行，以解决五个研究问题。首先，研究者将在课程的开始、中间和结束时使用定量方法测量学生的目标定向和动机。本实验将探讨不同的评分结构是否会影响学生的目标取向，以及目标取向与学生完成课堂作业的动机之间是否存在关系。第二，研究者将在课程开始和结束时使用一个工具来测量内容知识和自我效能。结构方程模型将被用来确定是否内容知识和自我效能提高课程与替代评分。最后，研究人员将确定是否准备不足的学生通过使用在两个实验中收集的数据，并应用教育准备的措施，以确定是否这个变量提高模型拟合的数据的替代分级结构的差异影响。这是第一个研究，解决是否替代分级结构对学生掌握目标取向的影响。虽然人们普遍认为成绩对内部动机、焦虑、自我调节学习和内容学习有负面影响，但很难证明没有成绩会产生相反的影响。目标取向理论可以解释为什么有些学生不能从不分级结构中受益。本研究将增进我们对教学法如何影响准备不足学生目标定向的理解。结果可以通知教师在他们的课程设计，纳入实践，可以受益于最需要它的学生。 该项目得到了NSF的EDU Core Research Building Capacity in STEM Education Research（ECR：BCSER）项目的支持，该项目旨在培养研究人员开展高质量STEM教育研究的能力。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。