We developed a hands-on course in molecular biology for undergraduate underrepresented in medicine (URM) students. To incentivize student preparation for team-based learning (TBL) activities, we implemented a novel grading schema that requires a minimum individual readiness assurance test (iRAT) score to share the team group readiness assurance…

This article presents the structure of the organic chemistry laboratory Course "Synthesis and Extraction of Drugs" that is included in Modena University (Italy) in the third year of the five-year "Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Technologies" degree program. This course is unique in its kind, and it aims to provide students with…

The authors examined the big-fish-little-pond effect (BFLPE) on academic self-concept (ASC) using different indicators of academic ability (i.e., achievement test, cognitive ability test, grades corrected for grading-on-a-curve effects, uncorrected grades). They investigated under what circumstances grades are suitable indicators of academic…

This study examines the enduring problem of inconsistent K-12 grading practices by exploring the relationship between teachers' perceptions of various grading practices, such as factoring student behavior in academic grades, as related to grade level, district locale, and training. Survey responses from 2,996 K-12 teachers from one suburban and…

Standards-based grading, in which grading should be designed to communicate to students their current level of mastery with regards to well-articulated standards, is becoming popular at the K-12 level. As yet, the literature addressing standards-based grading at the university level is scarce. In this paper, I document my attempts to put into…

This article traces the experience of university students in an upper division business course as they collectively authored an e-book as their course project. The professor designated the title of the book and the three themes that provided the structure of the book: service, leadership, and purpose. The 25 students at Pepperdine University in…

In recent years there was been a raft of criticisms of the way that grades (or marks) are assigned to students. The purpose of this paper is to examine the strengths and weaknesses of grading systems and grading practices, drawing upon both historical and contemporary research and writing. Five questions are used to frame the review and organize…

The purpose of this study was to determine if there was a correlation between the implementation of standards-based grading (SBG) and a rise in student achievement as indicated by the evaluation of end-of-course exam data from the four core subject areas in secondary schools--English, Algebra, Government, and Biology. This mixed methods study…

This study investigated differences in college grading practices (first-year grade point average and course grades) by student and institutional characteristics and by academic discipline to inform and improve our understanding and use as among the most commonly employed criteria in validity and college readiness research. In addition, trends in…

We develop a random forest classifier that helps assign academic credit for a student's class forum participation. The classification target are the four classes created by student rank quartiles. Course content experts provided ground truth by ranking a limited number of post pairs. We expand this labeled set via data augmentation. We compute the…

At Saudi universities, there was a sudden shift from face-to-face instruction to distance learning and assessment in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. This study explored the status of online exams in language, linguistics, and translation courses in the first two semesters of the Pandemic (Spring 2020 and Fall 2020). Analysis of faculty…

This quantitative research study considered three academic factors, seven student-level variables, and four success measures across ten years of academic data related to undergraduate remedial mathematics beginning with the 2009-2010 academic year and ending with the 2018-2019 academic year. Secondary data was used to determine if there was a…

Assessment is a notorious source of preoccupation for faculty and university governing bodies, especially when an institution initiates curricular reforms which shift the programme learning outcomes for knowledge to competencies. One obstacle to acceptance arises from a culture of quantitative assessment (often represented by a single mark), which…

Sarah DeBacher and Deborah Harris-Moore offer their experiences with teaching in the aftermath of traumatic situations. DeBacher, who taught at the University of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and Harris-Moore, who taught at UC Santa Barbara following a mass shooting, explore the difficulty of teaching writing in the wake of…

This paper is an overview of the writing skill in the lower levels of learning in the contemporary society. The following areas of writing are highlighted: the writing programme and its goals, the basic methodology for writing tasks, broad groups of writing skills, the teaching of the writing skills in pre-primary and primary schools where…