Facilitated by:
Dr. Rose Muravchick, Associate Director for Educational Development, CTAL
Dr. Jennifer Shafer, Assistant Professor, Music Theory
Stefanie Hansen, Associate Professor, Department of Theater

If you’ve struggled to determine a meaningful difference between a B+ and an A- in one of your courses, your students probably have to. In this session, we’ll explore Specifications Grading, an alternative to a point-based grading system that can help students develop more self-regulation, as well as tap into their intrinsic motivation. Adopting Specifications Grading is a big task, so this session will focus on helping participants determine if it is a good match for a future course based on: your student learning outcomes, your students and their unique experiences, your department’s overall curriculum, and the situational factors of your course. We’ll review examples of specifications grading schemes from courses, discuss how to introduce it to students, and identify potential roadblocks that might impede the adoption of this particular approach to grading. Participants are encouraged to bring a syllabus for a course they plan to teach in the Spring 2022 semester for review.