This paper discusses the use of specification grading in sport management courses. The process organizes assignments around grading bundles and evaluates students as either Satisfactory or Unsatisfactory in meeting each assignment. A token system is created to provide flexibility to the students. There are advantages to using specification…

Ungrading or alternative grading has gained popularity among undergraduate educators. The purpose of this study was to compare students' perceptions of learning and two methods of grading in an upper-level exercise physiology course with third- and fourth-year undergraduate students. Two ungraded (UG1 and UG2) and two traditionally graded (TG1 and…

Norway has a longstanding tradition of prohibiting formal grading in primary education. This paper traces a century of restrictive grading policies and their associated discourses. Using Bacchi's (2009) "What's the Problem Represented to be" framework, we present an analysis of the policy documents that have underpinned Norwegian…

This article reviews and responds to recent (re)turns to and reconceptualizations of contract grading in the teaching of writing. I reflect on my own experience using contract grading in a variety of pedagogical contexts, and how this experience complicates scholarship on contract grading (now rebranded as labor-based grading and engagement-based…

Advanced practices for summative exam development and post-exam analysis are proven to be effective but aren't always practical, and, even when these are applied to some degree, exams remain inherently imperfect measures of student ability. Instructors may thus deem it necessary to adjust overall exam scores to account for aspects of an exam that…

This article is personal and rather anecdotal as it is an attempt to sum up my experience of 30 years of Ofsted inspections. The key questions remain what they always were. How do you deal with the sometimes conflicting requirements of support and accountability, objectivity and impartiality, styles of inspection, reporting and grading? Perhaps…

Spacing and retrieval practice enhance learning, but students often underuse these strategies. We tested a simple grading incentive, which we call Counting Days, in two RCTs: one randomizing 143 students within a course and another randomizing 71 instructors. The "counting questions" control condition awarded points for each practice…

When we implement a grading system that prioritizes completion and compliance and penalizes students who take risks, we "disrupt" the learning journey--not further it. It's time to align how we grade with what we know from research works best and help move learning forward for all students. "Grading Visible Learners" provides…

Assessment in higher education is often a balancing act between fairness and the inherent complexity of standards, with evaluative judgement playing a crucial role in determining the quality of student work. This study employs a sociomaterial perspective to investigate the often-obscured justifications used by examiners during real-time moderation…

In the Scandinavian countries, students have a right to have their written exam results reviewed or appealed if they are not satisfied and wish to challenge the grading quality. This process is a way to ensure quality in the decision-making. However, there are significant differences between the Scandinavian countries. In Norway, in contrast to…

Teachers' conceptions of fairness influence their approaches to assessment. Perceptions of fairness underpin how teachers legitimate their values and provide reasons for teachers to defend assessment decisions and actions. This study therefore examined fairness conceptions at a critical stage in teachers' journey towards assessment capacity: their…

School leaders struggle in their efforts to implement standards-based grading reforms in large part because they fail to address the inconsistency in grading practices among individual teachers. This article describes three crucial steps necessary to gain greater consistency in teachers' grading practices: (1) Reaching consensus on a purpose…

How and what schools report as grades is important. Academics argue that traditional grading reduces teaching effectiveness and the accuracy of reporting (Marzano & Heflebower, 2011). Many education experts advocate for standards-based grading (SBG) as a research-based response (Link & Guskey, 2022; O'Connor, 2018; Townsley et al., 2019).…

The stress created by academic pressure may prevent honors students from exploring curricula beyond that required by their majors. Challenged with additional workload and extracurricular requirements, students in honors often confront added stress caused by a desire to perform favorably in all academic pursuits. This pressure may result in…

Automatic short-answer grading (ASAG) is a key component of intelligent tutoring systems. Deep learning is an advanced method to deal with recognizing textual entailment tasks in an end-to-end manner. However, deep learning methods for ASAG still remain challenging mainly because of the following two major reasons: (1) high-precision scoring…