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Session Description

Grading practices have been identified as one of the main culprits in the persistence of equity gaps. Traditional grading methods can be inequitable, ineffective, and even damaging.

The CLIMB-UP project (EHR: IUSE/HSI) aims to improve the institutional capacity to improve teaching and learning by using Mastery-Based Grading (MBG) in key sophomore courses (i.e., Statics, Strengths of Materials, Fluid Mechanics, Dynamics, and Embedded Systems) at a very-high enrolling four-year public Hispanic-Serving Institution. CLIMB-UP is a three-year professional development program for faculty to support redesigning and implementing sophomore-level “gateway” engineering courses into a Mastery Grading approach and documenting its effect on students’ academic profiles. Mastery grading is a form of grading based on (1) measurable learning outcomes, (2) eventual mastery of the material, (3) multiple opportunities to show mastery, with no penalty for failed attempts and (4) the use of helpful feedback to provide feedback loops to assist student learning.

We are coming to the end of the initial three-year project for CLIMB. One of the key deliverables of the project is a faculty-development training program to assist faculty in developing the skills needs to redesign a course to use Mastery Grading and implement it at their institution. The purpose of this special session is to introduce this training program to faculty-development professionals, walk the participants through what it takes to train faculty to redesign a course for Mastery Grading, and present all the necessary materials and support for institutions who wish to provide this course for their faculty. The training program consists of a 30-hour initial intensive that can be done in a variety of in-person or online synchronous timeframes followed by a series of follow up tasks and projects for faculty to complete. A comprehensive timeline for the training program, along with supporting documentation for forming and supporting a faculty learning community will also be provided.

After the initial 30-hour intensive, there is a subsequent training component for faculty who wish to adopt a course after it has been redesigned by a different faculty member. These training materials are also included.

Format
The format of this session would be a 90-minute work session where each of the four pillars of Mastery Grading listed above would be presented along with the readings, training materials and structures to be utilized by instructional designers or faculty developers in working with their own faculty. Participants would be given USB drives with copies of all the relevant training materials and will have the opportunity to participate in shorter versions of the main components of the training in order to experience parts of the training program for themselves.

Learning Objectives
At the end of this session, participants will be able to:
1. Explain the concepts of the four pillars of Mastery Grading;
2. Describe the different strands of the faculty training program;
3. Facilitate the use of literature-to-practice training sessions with faculty;
4. Facilitate the rewriting of effective, clear, measurable learning outcomes by faculty;
5. Explain the four grading architecture decisions that faculty need to make in the development of a Mastery Graded course; and
6. Provide training on the writing of helpful feedback and utilizing feedback loops in a Mastery Graded course.

Included in this session will be samples of the different training activities included in the faculty development course including:

Literature-to-practice: reading of relevant research literature followed by immediate discussions of applying the literature to the goal of course redesign.

Direct instruction: Introduction of new content by the session facilitators

Group work: Working with informal groups to discuss different challenge questions posed by the facilitators.

The core facilitators of this session will be Sharona Krinsky and Robert Bosley. Professors Krinsky and Bosley were the faculty developers who created the training program being presented, ran it for the participants in the CLIMB project, and have subsequently run it two additional times for 25 faculty each time in partnership with the Mathematics Association of America.

Moderated by

1. Sharona Krinsky

Speakers

1. Sharona Krinsky

   California State University, Los Angeles

   Professor Krinsky has been using Mastery Grading since 2016 in her mathematics classes and has directly trained over 100 faculty in the use of Mastery Grading in the classroom across multiple disciplines and institutional contexts. She is a founding organizer of The Grading Conference, an annual online conference entering its fifth year, dedicated to the expansion of the use of alternative grading methodologies including Mastery Grading. The conference draws over 500 higher education faculty each year from across the STEM disciplines. She is a lecturer in the Department of Mathematics at California State University Los Angeles. Professor Krinsky is a co-PI on the CLIMB project.

2. Mr. Robert Christopher Bosley

   California State University, Los Angeles

   Professor Bosley has been using Mastery Grading since 2018 in mathematics classes at both high school and higher education institutions. He is a certified Equitable Grading and Instruction coach for the Los Angeles Unified School District through which he trains dozens of high school instructors in all disciplines to convert their courses to alternative grading methods. He is also an organizer of The Grading Conference. In addition to being a full-time instructor in the Los Angeles Unified School District, Professor Bosley also teaches as a part-time lecturer at California State University Los Angeles in the Department of Mathematics.