2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This evidence-based practice paper describes the motivation and impact of implementing alternative grading in a professionalism sequence for engineering students. According to ABET, ASEE, the National Academy of Engineering, and industry professionals more generally, professional skills such as teamwork and communication are integral to engineering education. However, these skills are often not explicitly taught or assessed in engineering education curriculum; rather, they are often built into other technical or design classes and experiences. Although any professional practice can be helpful in developing these skills, there is also benefit to having dedicated courses to provide structure in building professionalism skills. [PROGRAM] offers students a unique four-semester professionalism sequence where students work full-time in engineering internships and co-ops while enrolled full-time in technical, design, and professionalism learning credits. This theory-to-practice paper describes relevant evidence-based practices in alternative grading and how they can be applied to professionalism learning experiences. It is part of a sequence of papers published by [PROGRAM] that explore the use of alternative grading in technical, design, and professional learning experiences. Although this paper specifically applies these practices to a unique multi-semester professionalism sequence that involves students working in internships and co-ops, the work provides insight into assessment of professional skills in more traditional technical and design courses as well.
Previous iterations of this four-semester professionalism sequence used a grading scheme where students earned numeric scores on assignments that were weighted into a final grade. Following the redesign, an alternative grading strategy was implemented where students earn “tokens” for meeting learning objectives or turning in acceptable deliverables. This approach combines the alternative grading approaches of standards-based grading and labor-based grading – allowing the instructors to identify both required learning outcomes to be met (standards-based), as well as learning experiences that they should participate in (labor-based).
To explore the impact of this change, assignment completion rates, assignment grades, and final grades were compared for individual students before and after the change to token grading. These results give insight into how students experience and prioritize professionalism learning – especially in work-based models. Demographic data offers further insight into how this change impacted various identity groups.
Takeaways are presented for those looking to instruct a professionalism course, implement an iterative multisemester professionalism sequence, use internship and co-op experiences as evidence of professional learning, and/or use alternative grading strategies to assess professionalism in technical or design learning experiences. We are open to presenting this paper as a talk, or as a lightning talk or panel with other papers about alternative grading.