The development of equitable grading systems that provide students with effective feedback and provide instructors with an efficient means of assessment are of deep interest to chemical educators. A recent trend in chemical education, and STEM education more broadly, has been the use of specifications, or specs, grading that emphasizes mastery of…

Motivating students towards language learning includes embedding meaningful themes, communicative tasks, and authentic assessments. When voice and choice are held as essential qualities of the task, students invest in the resources to make meaning and express their own thoughts, thus moving us away from traditional assessments that emphasize…

Capstone projects provide key learning opportunities for STEM undergraduates to consolidate knowledge gained over the life of their degree. These projects typically reflect lab- or fieldwork-based research, which can exclude students who do not wish to pursue these career avenues. Here we deployed school engagement projects (SEPs) as an…

Potential-Focused Learning is based on constructivist concepts and concentrates on the 'patterns of construction of learning relevant realities' and the 'self-organisation' of individuals and systems. On the basis of constructivism we will present in this article a new dynamic concept of potentials and 'positive differences' that expand the…

In 2020, because of the COVID-19 pandemic the higher education sector, in the United Kingdom and internationally, transitioned to online assessment, at a speed and scale which might have been unimaginable under normal circumstances. The priority in the sector was to ensure that fundamental principles of assessment, including integrity, were…

In this article, I present some of the teaching and learning challenges faced from the perspective of a U.K. business school dean. There are many challenges that I could have chosen, but my focus is on the unpredictable external environment, the conundrum of teaching evaluation, developing teaching staff, and the curriculum issues we face.

This chapter proposes supplementing traditional assessment strategies with innovative and authentic ways to evaluate students' performance on intended learning outcomes.

Courses: Strategic Campaigns, Advertising/Public Relations Campaigns. Objectives: The purpose of this semester-long project is student application of research-based strategic communication strategies and techniques used in executing a professional strategic communication campaign for a client.

Teacher education programs in 40 states require teacher candidates working toward visual art certification to take edTPA, a high-stakes summative performance assessment developed by Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning and Equity (SCALE) and distributed by Pearson's Evaluations Systems (Pearson Education, 2018). Since its implementation in…

In spring 2017, for the third year running, 10th graders at Boston Green Academy (BGA) presented GreenTalks, a showcase of research on food justice issues. The day Christina Kuriacose visited the school, students were presenting the PowerPoints they had put together. All of them included a map plotting out the proximity of their neighborhood or…

In this paper, we compare and contrast our experiences in using standards-based grading in different courses and across two separate institutions to explore the related tradeoffs and subtleties in designing and implementing such grading systems, guided by innovation diffusion theory. We summarize our individual courses, use Linda Nilson's criteria…

Over the course of six months, edTPA went from being an abstract jumble of letters thrown around to describe some assessment that we were going to have to do at some point before graduation (yes, the conversations were that uncertain) to a very concrete mountain that each member of my cohort was expected to climb triumphantly, in spite of the fact…

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), passed by Congress in 2015, provides an important opportunity for states to broaden their definition of student success. As states begin to implement their ESSA plans, it is timely for them to reflect on ways they can include measures of social, emotional, and academic development; school climate; and related…

How do teachers ignite a fire that kindles a love for books and produces a sense of wonder in the science classroom? What do teachers know and do that lights that spark in their students (Cummins 2012)? In this article, science and mathematics professor Sally Mayberry highlights a number of trade books that have made a fantastic difference in the…

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) requires state accountability systems to include indicators of "school quality and student success" along with indicators of academic outcomes. The new law provides an important opportunity for states to broaden the definition of student success to include measures of students' social-emotional, as…