The hallmark of a well-designed game is player persistence -- the same characteristic professors hope to cultivate in their students, especially in the face of the student retention crisis. The four studies reported here include an archival study, a focus group, and two experiments. They each test a minor game mechanic that may have a small but…

In any science field, including physics, it is important to remain abreast of new assessment methods to cater to the 21st-century student. The rationale of this paper is to argue for a move away from the use of lower-order thinking skills (LOTS) in e-assessment in favor of higher-order thinking skills (HOTS), in line with Bloom's Revised Taxonomy.…

The purpose of this action research project was to investigate the impact of a mastery-based grading system on the mindsets of high school students. The mixed methods data collection for this project took place over the course of two years. The students were part of a high achieving and mostly high socio-economic status community. I collected…

Subscore reporting under item response theory models has always been a challenge partly because the test length of each subdomain is limited for precisely locating individuals on multiple continua. Diagnostic classification models (DCMs), providing a pass/fail decision and associated probability of pass on each subdomain, are promising…

Grading reliability for a class can be measured as the correlation between the students' grade point average (GPA) and the grades they received in that class. Grading leniency can be measured as the difference between the average grade for the class and the students' average GPA. Data from more than fifty-thousand course sections show that lenient…

While academic dishonesty has been an area of study for numerous decades, research has focused primarily on the perpetrators of cheating and understanding why students cheat. In contrast, little attention has been devoted to examining the reactions of students who witness cheating. The current study investigated undergraduate students' reactions…

Research on teachers' grading has shown that there is great variability among teachers regarding both the process and product of grading, resulting in low comparability and issues of inequality when using grades for selection purposes. Despite this situation, not much is known about the merits or disadvantages of different models for grading. In…

Traditional grading and reporting practices have been part of the educational system in the United States for centuries. Those grading practices are ingrained in schools across the country and have not changed much, if at all, over time. Traditional grading practices have a plethora of downfalls, but we continue to use them because they are what…

In Sweden, grades are used for selection to upper-secondary school and higher education, even though agreement in teachers' grading is low and the selection therefore potentially unfair. Furthermore, measures taken to increase the agreement have not been successful. This study has explored how to increase agreement in teachers' grading by…

Scoring language learners' speaking skills is open to a number of measurement errors since raters' personal judgements could involve in the process. Different grading designs in which raters score a student's whole speaking skills or a specific dimension of the speaking performance could be settled to control and minimize the amount of the error…

The author of this article discusses the extensive use and analysis of real-world situations as the core construct on which to build a course in principles of microeconomics. Building on the literature that focuses on current event readings, the goal here is to train students to be able to "do economics." The author details course…

There are several academic resources to help an instructor navigate the asynchronous online classroom. Teaching in the current collegiate environment presents some different strategic and pedagogical considerations, among them student engagement within the classroom. Student engagement seems to be the golden key to unlocking the door of success in…

Without question, faculty (regardless of discipline) should be equipped with the necessary skills to assess students fairly and ethically. This study focuses on the central and prevailing importance of faculty judgment and how that judgment (or lack thereof) influences perceptions related to ethics and assessment of students. The study outlines…

Through a qualitative multiple case study, the researcher's goal in conducting this study was to investigate and understand the experiences of five upper elementary teachers in grades three through five who transitioned from traditional grading practices to standards-based grading (SBG) practices at one elementary school. Using Albert Bandura's…

In the United States the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) workforce is in high demand. To meet this demand, students graduating from high school must have the necessary 21st century skills and interest to pursue a STEM career. Unfortunately, student interest in STEM has been shown to decline starting in the upper grades of…