This article asks the following questions: What pressures do teachers face from parents and senior administrators? How do the pressures teachers face from parents and senior administrators affect how they teach students? Specifically, how does this affect the methods they engage in to generate 'good' student outcomes? It answers these questions by…

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many United States brick-and-mortar schools in Spring 2020 rapidly transitioned to emergency remote learning. School leaders grappled with how grades ought to fit within the many unknowns of K-12 remote education. In some cases, schools modified their grading scales to give students greater flexibility to pass…

Background and Context: automated feedback for programming assignments has great potential in promoting just-in-time learning, but there has been little work investigating the design of feedback in this context. Objective: to investigate the impacts of different designs of automated feedback on student learning at a fine-grained level, and how…

Learning data analytics improves the learning field in higher education using educational data for extracting useful patterns and making better decisions. Identifying potential at-risk students may help instructors and academic guidance to improve the students' performance and the achievement of learning outcomes. The aim of this research study is…

The study investigated student reaction to the alternative mechanics survey (AMS), a modified force concept inventory, which used automatically marked free-response questions and offered limited feedback to students after their answers had been submitted. Eight participants were observed in completing the AMS, and they were interviewed to gain…

The development of oral presentation skills requires multiple opportunities to present and receive focused feedback. In typical discipline-based and general-education courses, class time is precious, and even when oral presentations are part of a course, students may receive only one or two opportunities to present with feedback. Here we describe…

Standards-based grading ensures students are graded consistently and fairly based on mastery of objectives versus non-academic reasons, such as participation, behavior, and effort, but implementation of standards-based grading faces many challenges. This narrative qualitative study explored teachers' experiences with and stories about implementing…

Grading standards in college vary substantially across fields, especially among STEM fields that tend to give lower grades than non-STEM fields. Prior research has demonstrated that grades affect course and major choices, but less is known about how policies oriented to reduce differences in grading standards across fields affect persistence and…

High school science teacher Michelle Vanhala reflects on her (sometimes rocky) path to standards-based grading and a grading system that aligned with her educational philosophy.

Gaps in teacher communication can cause confusion, especially when it comes to grades. To reduce asymmetries of information when grading performance tasks and projects, teachers should seek to honor each student's unique learning trajectory. Here, authors Eric Carbaugh and Kristina Doubet, present five ways to improve communication--and…

Concept maps make connections between ideas apparent, and thus would seem ideally suited to demonstrate learning. Yet, they are not widely used by instructors, particularly in large university classes. In this paper we review the strengths and rationale behind concept maps and provide examples we have used to structure content for one of our…

Teachers spend much of their time on assessment, yet many higher education teachers have received minimal guidance on assessment design and marking. This means assessment can often be a source of stress and frustration. "Assessment and Feedback in Higher Education" aims to solve these problems. Offering a concise overview of assessment…

Purpose: The undergraduate dissertation (UD) can be considered to be a reflection of the influence of the sustainable developmental goals (SDG) and the professional identity of the students. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the extent to which the topics of the UD reflect the SDG, considering, moreover, that they may be related to the…

National assessments of mathematics are often used as an objective measurement of students' knowledge. However, various factors are believed to influence students' achievements on the national assessments, among which students' invested effort. Moreover, students' effort may vary between genders and might be influenced by the presence of external…

This paper examines students' patterns of success in classes with high DFW rates at a research-intensive university. We investigated whether certain assignment types were associated with inequitable grade distributions for underrepresented minority (URM) and transfer students and whether assignment grade patterns were similar to final grade…