Standards-Based Grading

This quarter, Math 124 is piloting standards-based grading, an alternative grading system. This replaces the usual Math 124 policy of grades that are curved to a median of 2.9 ± 0.2. Here's how it works:

Overview

Throughout the course, you will have the opportunity to complete 21 "standards". Most of these standards are curriculum standards, which you complete during the weekly assessment quizzes. A few others are completed by doing the homework, participating in worksheets, and taking the online syllabus quiz.

At the end of the quarter, your grade is determined by how many of these standards you have completed. Additionally, four of the curriculum standards are "core standards", and you must complete all core standards in order to achieve a grade of 2.0 or above.

Differences from Traditional Grading

There are two biggest differences between Standards-Based Grading and traditional grading that might change how you interact with the course:

• Multiple attempts: In a traditional grading scheme, most of your grade is based on a few high-stakes tests (a few midterms and a final), and there isn't much opportunity to try again if you have a bad test. Here, we don't care if it takes you multiple tries to show you've learned the material, as long as you get there by the end of the quarter.
• Higher standards: On the other hand, to compensate for the high-stakes nature of the exams, traditional grading schemes usually offer a lot of partial credit. The problem is that this doesn't encourage mastery of the material! A student who firmly grasps half of the problems has learned more than a student who only half-understands each problem. Ever do the thing where you say, "okay, I don't know how to solve this problem, so I'm going to write down some relevant formulas from my note sheet"? Well, that usually works for getting a few partial credit points, but it doesn't actually represent learning! In this course, you can only get credit for a problem by fully solving it.

The 21 Standards

• The 18 curriculum standards are completed during Thursday quiz sections. Four of these are core standards, which you must complete in order to earn a grade of 2.0 or higher.
• The syllabus quiz standard is completed by acing the Syllabus Quiz.
• The homework standard is completed by earning 90% of the homework points.
• The worksheet standard is completed by participating in five or more Tuesday worksheet sessions.

Assessment Days

In Thursday quiz sections, you'll take assessments. This is how you complete the curriculum standards, which constitute the bulk of your grade.

Each assessment is a quiz consisting of one double-sided page, with one standard assessed on each side. During each week, there will be a new quiz available for the two new standards, along with quizzes for the past 2-3 weeks if you need to reattempt those assessments. The quizzes on old assessments are not the same as the ones from previous weeks, although they test similar material. See the course calendar for an exact schedule of which standards are available in which weeks.

When you show up for quiz section on assessment days, the TA will have stacks of quizzes at the front of the room, and you should pick up whichever ones you need. If you successfully completed both problems on the previous week's quiz, for example, you should not pick up a copy of that assessment. If you solved only one of the assessments from the previous week, then you should still pick up that quiz, but you can leave the side you already completed blank.

While you have the entire 50-minute quiz section available for these assessments, each individual quiz is not meant to take longer than 25 minutes, so you should have time to catch up on a few reassessments in addition to the new quiz each week. However, you probably will not be able to complete three full quizzes in a single week, so you should go into each assessment with a realistic plan of what you can do in a single session.

During each assessment, you are allowed one single-sided handwritten note sheet, along with a TI-30X IIS scientific calculator.

The final on Tuesday, June 9th is one last assessment day, during which you can reattempt any of the non-core assessments. If you are happy with your grade and do not need (or want) to complete any more assessments, you do not need to show up for the final.

Grade Conversion Table

Below is a table that shows how many standards you need to complete to obtain each grade.

Standard Scoring

There are three possible scores you can get on each in-class assessment:

• Proficient means that you've completed this standard! It now counts towards your overall grade. You earn this if your problem is completely correct, or has only one very small arithmetic mistake.
• Not proficient means that you haven't completed the standard yet, and will need to retake it in a later week. You earn this if your work has a significant mistake, or multiple small mistakes.
• Correctable means that your work is almost proficient, but there is a small notation issue that we want you to correct. This is a rare designation (most problems won't have this as a possible grade), and is reserved for cases where we believe you understand the material, but want to make sure you're aware of an important technical issue. For example, you might get see this if you forget to write a limit properly, or if you use degrees instead of radians when differentiating a trig function. If a standard is marked as Correctable, then you do not need to retake that standard during an assessment day. Instead, you can turn it into a Proficient grade by submitting a written correction through Canvas, or coming to office hours to talk about the problem with your instructor or TA. This correction must occur within one week of the assessment.

Curriculum Standards

See Canvas for a list of the curriculum standards.

Assessment Schedule

Here's the schedule of which assessments are tested in which week, in a compact table: