Standards-based grading (SBG) is grounded in the philosophy that mastery of material is achieved over time through multiple opportunities to learn, practice, and demonstrate understanding, rather than through a single attempt. Material is broken down into learning standards with SBG emphasizing growth and improvement; work is graded for mastery in a given learning standard. Rather than emphasizing the accumulation of points or grades, SBG focuses on student learning through a cycle of trying a learning standard, learning from feedback, and trying again, with the goal being eventual mastery of the standard. Interpretations and implementations of SBG can vary across educators and contexts, particularly in how standards are defined, assessed, and communicated to students. In this talk, we will share our interpretation and incorporation of SBG in a first year linear algebra course. Then, we will draw from our own interactions with students and their responses to our reflection survey to examine student attitudes toward SBG, including their experiences and responses to feedback.

Bios:

Schinella D'Souza is a Teaching Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Toronto, St. George. She currently teaches first-year calculus and linear algebra courses and has prior experience co-coordinating a large first-year calculus course at the University of Michigan. Her interests lie in effectively scaling active learning classrooms from small to large classrooms and in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, with current research involving student perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes towards different grading systems.

Camelia Karimianpour is an Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Toronto, St. George. She has previously held faculty positions at the University of Toronto Scarborough and the University of Michigan. Her interests lie in the scholarship of teaching and learning in mathematics, and in the application of algebraic structures in the arts and the sciences. She has coordinated several large first-year mathematics courses, and she has designed and taught undergraduate courses built on active learning and inquiry-based learning. Since 2021 she has designed a large first-year linear algebra course, in which she developed a standards-based grading system.