2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Alternative assessment, including standards-based grading (SBG) and specifications grading (often called ‘specs’ grading), are alternative assessment strategies intended to put the focus on student comprehension and skill-building by providing a more ‘objective’ format for determining a grade. SBG is typically employed in more ‘traditional’ assessments (e.g., homework or exams) and is often limited either to assessments of individual work or of team-based work where the entire team is evaluated on the same scale. Specs grading combines multiple objectives and grades them on a pass/fail system. In this study, an alternative assessment-inspired rubric was developed for assessments of technical writing in a senior-level, chemical engineering laboratory course that employs teams with defined roles for each team member. In this rubric, instructors defined standards (criteria/skills) for which proficiency could be obtained (similar to SBG grading) and could be assessed on a pass/fail basis (similar to specs grading). These standards were then allocated as either being specific to an individual team member role, or as a standard applicable to all members of the team. The number of standards met was then scaled to a traditional letter grade. Students were given the opportunity to resubmit their lab report multiple times utilizing the feedback from previous assessments. The rubric resulted in similar grades across instructors, units, and lab topics. Submission trends by students followed several styles; the styles indicating more proactive students showed higher final scores on average. Instructors preferred the alternative assessment method because of increased clarity of expectations, the absence of partial credit decisions, and a more distributed grading load.