Many middle school (MS) students have been exposed to inappropriate instructional practices in physical education (PE). Involvement in and exposure to these inappropriate instructional practices becomes a common occurrence, causing students to believe this is what should take place in their PE class. The purpose of this study was to better…

This article describes a framework of Standards-Based Grading suitable for use in a variety of mathematics courses. We detail our experience adapting this framework to various courses, ranging from Pre-calculus to Differential Equations, at four different institutions, including both small liberal arts colleges and large universities, and in class…

If the pandemic has taught us anything, it's that students don't need more stress. Fortunately, we can reduce students' anxiety about grading--and improve their learning. Grading expert Joe Feldman shares four "outdated" grading practices and their constructive, more equitable alternatives.

Specifications grading is a version of mastery grading distinguished by giving students clear specifications that their work must meet, and grading most things pass/fail based on those specifications. Mastery grading systems can get quite elaborate, with hierarchies of objectives and various systems for rewriting and retesting. In this article I…

This article reports on the implementation of a programme of individualised, peer-graded homework assignments in a large-scale engineering course, with minimal resources. Participation in the programme allows students to receive grades for problem-solving work in a setting more conducive to learning than the traditional final examination. The…

My goal in crafting homework in calculus is twofold: to provide scaffolding for students to develop a theoretical understanding of calculus concepts and to incorporate good mathematical exposition, including justification and proof when appropriate. I achieve these goals by creating weekly homework sets that students work on in groups of three or…

The problem of Computer Science students' cheating in their homework assignments so far has been handled mainly through administrative punishment of the cheaters. The success of such an approach depends to a large degree on the ability of the instructor to recognize the fact of cheating, which is a complicated task. With a large number of students…

This article examines moral conflicts identified by students (N = 302) and teachers (N = 20) in the context of Iranian schools. The data were gathered in 2016 from two lower secondary schools in Tehran, one for girls and one for boys. The content analysis of students' essays and teachers' interviews reveal that moral conflicts in Iranian secondary…

Peer assessment is often used for formative learning, but few studies have examined the validity of group-based peer assessment for the summative evaluation of course assignments. The present study contributes to the literature by using online technology (the course management system Moodle™) to implement structured, summative peer review based on…

The purpose of this study was to understand students' perspectives on the role of homework. Middle school students (N = 506) volunteered to complete open-ended surveys describing their perceptions regarding the effectiveness of homework. Qualitative analysis revealed that students identified several instructional and noninstructional reasons for…

Variations of the question, "How are you doing in school?" are among those most frequently posed by adults to students (Reeves, 2004). Grades represent the primary source of that information; indeed, Olson (1995) called grades "one of the most sacred traditions in American education" (p. 24). There is so much trust in the…

Authors have researched the effects of homework, but few studies have delved into the idea of students' attitude towards homework. Consequently, students' perception of homework, the principal participants, remains largely unknown. Students' experience in homework that started as early as elementary school has influenced their ideas of homework.…

Using the delivery of a large postgraduate distance learning module in bioethics to health professionals as an illustrative example, the type of learning activity that could be enhanced through delivery in an immersive virtual world (IVW) was explored. Several activities were repurposed from the "traditional" virtual learning environment…

"WeBWorK," an online homework system, can be be used to deliver daily reading questions to students. The author studied its use for this purpose with a lower division Introduction to Programming course and an upper division Probability and Statistics course. In the lower division course, "WeBWorK" significantly improved peer…

In previous studies of homework in core academic subjects, positive student attitudes toward homework were linked to higher achievement, whereas time spent on homework showed an inconsistent relationship with achievement. This study examined the generalizability of these findings to foreign language learning by analyzing 2,342 adult students'…