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

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评估学生作业的方式可能会破坏有意义的学习。例如，当教授给作业分配分数时，学生的目标就会转向取得高分，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、更高的焦虑感和对知识和技能水平的自我意识降低有关。替代的评分策略有可能通过依赖对具体学习结果的明确掌握标准、有用的反馈和不受惩罚的重新评估机会来消除评分的有害影响。根据目标定向理论，这些特征应该将学生的目标从表现(例如，我执行这项任务是为了把课程做得更好)转变为掌握(例如，我执行这项任务，因为它帮助我学习)。尽管有多份报告表明，另类评分对动机和冒险行为有积极影响，而且另类评分倡导者的社区也在不断增加，但另类评分策略对动机信念、自我意识和学业表现的影响的证据很少。尤其重要的是，在学生人数比例偏低的机构中研究替代评分的影响，这些学生可以从促进这些心态和技能的学习环境中受益最大。该项目旨在探索在大学课程中采用替代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。这个项目很重要，因为它有可能为高入学率课程提供以研究为导向的课程变化，目的是减少高入学率生物课程的学生自然流失。本项目旨在探索课程年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。为了做到这一点，研究人员将专注于两门招生人数较高的课程--普通生物学II(低年级)和佛罗里达国际大学(FIU)的遗传学课程(高年级)，FIU是一所西班牙裔服务机构。将进行两个配对实验，将具有不同评分结构的部分与每门课程的评分部分进行比较，以回答五个研究问题。首先，研究人员将使用定量方法来测量学生在课程开始、中期和结束时的目标定向和动机。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。其次，研究人员将在课程开始和结束时应用一种工具来测量内容知识和自我效能感。结构方程模型将被用来确定内容知识和自我效能感在替代评分的课程中是否有所提高。最后，研究人员将使用在两个实验中收集的数据来确定准备不足的学生是否受到另一种评分结构的不同影响，并应用教育准备措施来确定这个变量是否改善了与数据的模型拟合。这是首批研究不同等级结构是否会影响学生掌握目标定向的研究之一。虽然人们普遍认为年级对内部动机、焦虑、自我调节学习和内容学习有负面影响，但很难证明没有年级会产生相反的影响。目标定向理论可以解释为什么一些学生无法从未分级的结构中受益。这项研究将加深我们对教学法如何影响准备不足学生的目标定向的理解。结果可以让教师在课程设计中纳入实践，使最需要的学生受益。该项目得到了NSF的STEM教育研究EDU核心研究能力建设计划(ECR：BCSER)的支持，该计划旨在建设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，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.