Asee peer logo

Mastery Grading for Equity in a Chemistry for Engineers Course

Download Paper |

Conference

2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Baltimore , Maryland

Publication Date

June 25, 2023

Start Date

June 25, 2023

End Date

June 28, 2023

Conference Session

Equity, Culture & Social Justice in Education Division (EQUITY) Technical Session 3

Tagged Divisions

Equity and Culture & Social Justice in Education Division (EQUITY)

Tagged Topic

Diversity

Page Count

10

DOI

10.18260/1-2--43550

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/43550

Download Count

118

Request a correction

Paper Authors

biography

Susan Garver Stirrup University of Colorado, Denver

visit author page

Susan Garver Stirrup is a full time Instructor in the College of Engineering, Design, and Computing at the University of Colorado Denver. Her primary focus is developing and delivering the Chemistry For Engineers course, tailoring the chemistry content for mechanical, civil, and electrical engineering students.

visit author page

Download Paper |

Abstract

In this work-in-progress paper, the instructor has implemented mastery grading into a Chemistry for Engineers course. The common grading conventions of US colleges and universities generally involve students earning points that accumulate and result in a final grade according to the percentage of points earned. This grading system rewards the students able to attend class every session and learn on the timeline the instructor determines. This inherited practice skews outcomes against already underserved student populations in typical engineering education. Traditional grading practices have an embedded hidden curriculum that rewards behaviors such as attendance, participation, and turning assignments in on time rather than assessing the understanding of the content. This system favors the students that already know how to “do school”. The good news is that there are alternative assessment methods that are more equitable. All students can benefit from more equitable grading practices. These alternative methods are often referred to as “ungrading” and are commonly embraced in arts and humanities courses. Translating these grading practices to the STEM fields often draws concerns that the academic rigor will be diminished. With mastery grading, rather than earning points, the students are assessed on their level of mastery on a variety of content outcomes. Mastery grading allows for learning to be student-centered and focuses on the understanding of course content on the student’s timeline. Mastery grading promotes the growth mindset and highlights the learning process as a continuum rather than focusing on fixed high-stakes assessments. This paper describes the methods of implementing mastery grading, developing outcomes and assessments as well as how students reacted to this change of grading method. The paper also compares outcomes from this newly revised version of the course to the more traditionally assessed version. Suggestions for further research on this practice in other engineering courses are also offered.

Stirrup, S. G. (2023, June), Mastery Grading for Equity in a Chemistry for Engineers Course Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--43550

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2023 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015