Making Grades Meaningful - Standards-Based Grading for Engineering Project Courses

这个改进本科STEM教育（IUSE）项目将有助于改进测量和评估学生在工程课程中的进步的过程。该项目将调查在本科工程项目课程中使用基于标准的评分。以标准为基础的评分直接衡量学生在实现明确的课程目标方面的发展质量。这种方法解决了高等教育中评估学生实际学习相对于特定严格能力的需要。这个合作项目将汇集来自不同机构的教师：亚利桑那州立大学、伊丽莎白镇学院、洛约拉玛丽蒙特大学和普渡大学，参与一个本科工程教师社区，教授项目课程，作为重点的第一步，在本科工程课程中实施基于标准的评分。基于标准的评分已经在K-12学习环境中实施，但迄今为止还没有进行正式的研究来评估高等教育中的这种评分系统。为了解决这一差距，这项教育研究工作的目标是：正式建立一个基于标准的工程项目课程评分系统的结构和组成部分；评估基于标准的评分在工程项目课程中的效果；建立一个学者合作网络，致力于在工程教育中实施和推进基于标准的评分。本项目基于一系列试点研究的探索性结果，在工程课程中实施基于标准的评分，发现学生的情感和认知行为都有所改善。本项目将采用定性和定量方法，在试点研究建立的基础上继续发展。教师和学生将提供基于标准的评分对相关价值、工程设计自我效能和学术成就的影响的见解。这项工作将提供关于如何以标准为基础的替代传统的基于分数的评分可以改善本科工程教育的信息。该项目包括努力将这项工作的结果传达给更广泛的STEM教育界。

This Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) project will help improve the process through which student progress in engineering courses is measured and evaluated. The project will investigate the use of standards-based grading in undergraduate engineering project courses. Standards-based grading directly measures the quality of students' development towards achieving well-defined course objectives. This approach addresses the need in higher education to assess actual student learning relative to specific rigorous competencies. This collaborative project will bring together faculty at a diverse set of institutions: Arizona State University, Elizabethtown College, Loyola Marymount University, and Purdue University to engage a community of undergraduate engineering faculty teaching project courses as a focused first effort to implement standards-based grading in the undergraduate engineering curriculum. Standards-based grading has been implemented in K-12 learning environments but no formal studies have been conducted to date that evaluate this grading system in higher education. To address this gap, the goals of this educational research effort are to: formally establish the structure and components of a standards-based grading system for engineering project courses; assess the effects of standards-based grading in engineering project courses; and establish a collaborative network of scholars committed to implementing and advancing standards-based grading within engineering education. This project is based on exploratory results of a series of pilot studies implementing standards-based grading in engineering courses that found improvement in both affective and cognitive student behaviors. This project will use qualitative and quantitative methods to build on the foundation established in the pilot studies. Faculty and students will provide insights into the impact that standards-based grading has on associated value, engineering design self-efficacy, and academic achievement. This work will provide information about how a standards-based alternative to traditional score-based grading can improve undergraduate engineering education. The project includes efforts to communicate the results of this work to the broader STEM education community.