2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Developing alternative forms of grading and assessment has been an area of ongoing interest in engineering education. Mastery grading is one form of alternative grading which allows students to have multiple attempts to demonstrate their progress toward learning objectives. While mastery grading has been implemented in a variety of contexts, it is less common in undergraduate engineering courses. This paper summarizes a faculty’s first time implementation of mastery grading in an upper division software engineering course and presents a longitudinal study of students’ perspectives toward mastery grading. We review the perspective of the faculty and students. We surveyed students throughout the semester to understand (1) the change in students’ attitude towards mastery grading, (2) if students understood the mechanics of mastery grading and (3) the extent to which students found this system helpful for their learning versus traditional grading. We found that while students initially had a strong negative reaction towards the new grading scheme, over time, they seemed to prefer this grading method. Mastery grading made it possible to adapt to changes as issues arose. We then describe the mastery grading scheme implementation from the perspective of the instructor. Finally, we discuss the implications of this work for research on grading as well as the implications for instructors.