Renee Link is a Professor of Teaching at UC Irvine and presented on “A Structure for Designing Specifications Grading Systems.” Link is a teaching faculty member and organizes chemistry labs involving 1000-1200 students, 6 graduate TAs, and 1 head TA or stockroom manager! Wow. Link introduced specifications grading and Linda Nilson’s book. They published how they adapted specifications grading for their lab course and published it in the Journal Chem. Educ. in 2021. Link shared a diagram illustrating the specifications grading scheme for their course: they have a mastery learning section, competency-based learning, and a contract grading component. They also use a “token economy” in which students have choices and opportunities to use “tokens” to try again to revise/resubmit work. Link shared examples and references of specs grading outside of STEM in political science, communications, public administration, and information literacy. With colleagues, Link designed a specifications (specs) grading diagram with two cycles/circles: minimum requirement with tokens, revise & resubmit, and bundles. Bundles are connected to another cycle with rubrics and thresholds. Link asked the audience: make a list of assessments for your course and to then select the most crucial to allow students to redo. Link emphasized that with limited time to grade, are there items that can be autograded by the LMS or graded as complete/incomplete or peer-/self-graded? Then, they asked: will you be accepting revisions, resubmissions, and reassessments? Link asked TAs to selfreport time spent grading for points-based and specs grading. There was no difference. They shared a link to references and studies with similar results. Link then described the token system they use. Students can choose when to use their tokens for late passes and resubmissions. Link replaced extra credit with activities to earn tokens through metacognition activities, safety, and surveys. Using the LMS (Canvas) students can trade tokens using a Google Form. Link mentioned that for a class of 60 it takes about ten minutes a day to update the tokens…. instead of numerous emails. Link described common specifications grading configurations:
- Core and advanced objectives: core objectives are needed for a passing grade and more advanced objectives contribute to a higher grade.
- All equal objectives: course objectives are divided and more objectives contribute to higher grade.
- Objectives organized by modules: learning objectives are organized in modules or bins and higher grades are earned for passing more modules.
- Equal objectives with repetition & difficulty (created by Link): course objectives are met through multiple means and more repetitions & higher-order assessments contribute to higher grades.
In Link’s organic chemistry course, there are specs for each grade.
This session was full of useful information about specs grading and was an example of a “working session” in which participants were active and thinking about specs grading in their courses!
