Competency/Equity Hybrid

Intent

Combine aspects of competency-based grading, grading for equity, and universal design for instruction (UDI) to provide a more accurate and fair way of assessing student learning in collegiate-level computer science courses.

Problem

Traditional grading approaches in collegiate-level computer science courses tend to treat learning as “one size fits all”. Typically, these approaches provide a single opportunity to demonstrate proficiency or mastery of a core concept, on a rigid timeline, with limited to no opportunities for makeups. Such a system ignores that students learn at different rates, come to the college classroom with different needs and backgrounds, and may struggle to express their ideas in certain assessment formats (like tests). Traditional systems are thus inaccurate, unfair, and inequitable.

Traditionally-designed assessments have additional side effects. The high-stakes nature of single- or limited-chance assessments create conditions for academic dishonesty, where students prioritize completing an assignment correctly regardless of whether they understand or can explain their work. Such assessments may also foster a fixed mindset in students.

Solution

This play consists of the following components:

1. A small set of clearly defined core competencies. These form the key learning outcomes of the course, and are the competencies that students should be able to demonstrate upon completion of the course. The examples in the source included 6-8 core competencies per course.
2. Multiple assessment mechanisms. Students can demonstrate proficiency in the core competencies in multiple ways throughout the course. Examples given in the source document include:
   • Code reviews, for each programming or algorithm design assignment, where students meet 1-1 with the professor or other course staff to present their code / algorithm and answer questions about it.
   • Oral interviews, where students meet 1-1 with the professor to answer questions about core concepts.
   • Online quizzes, auto-graded and randomized.
   • Written reports and oral reports, where students apply course concepts to novel and/or real-world problems.
3. Multiple opportunities to demonstrate proficiency. Students can attempt assessments at any point during the semester without penalty, up to the last day of the semester. To mitigate demands on instructor time, students are limited to one assessment attempt per day.
4. 5-point grading scale emphasizing competency levels for each core competency. Each core competency is evaluated on a 5-point scale, such as the one below. Final course grades are determined by the number of competencies achieved at various levels. (For instance, an A corresponds to 4 competencies at Mastery level and all others at Approaching Mastery.)
   • Mastery: complete understanding of concept, ability to apply concepts in a variety of scenarios.
   • Approaching Mastery: understands and can apply concepts to scenarios not explicitly covered in the course.
   • Proficiency: can provide definitions of core concepts and apply them to scenarios covered in the course.
   • Basic: partial or limited understanding of core concepts.
   • Inconclusive: no demonstration of understanding, or instructor cannot determine student’s level of understanding
5. Pre-course interviews. The purpose of these short, 1-1 interviews is to assess student understanding of prerequisite knowledge at the start of the course. These interviews allow the instructor to pitch the course concepts at a level appropriate to the students in the course.

Applicability

Because of the time-intense nature of assessments, many of which are done in person and 1-1, this play works best in small-to-medium sized courses with adequate staffing.

The self-paced nature of the course assessments may make this play better suited to upper-level courses with students who are used to managing their own time. If it is used in an introductory-level course, with students newer to university who may lack good time management skills, the instructor and course staff may need to provide more scaffolding to help students manage the self-paced workload.

How to Implement

Time management, by the instructor / course staff and the students, plays a major role in the success, or failure, of this particular play. Here are some factors that implementers should consider in that regard:

• Student procrastination. Student assessment attempts are not uniformly distributed across the semester; students tend to put off assessments until the end of the course, and / or generally not space out assessment attempts. In the source article, the author spent an average of 10 hours of week outside of class on assessments, with light weeks at the start of the term and many hours spent in the last week of the term. Instructors may want to consider ways to either incentivize students to spread out their attempts throughout the term, or to place a tight upper bound on the time spent per week on assessments. For instance, the source author limited student assessment attempts to one per day, as one way to manage instructor time and energy.
• Instructor time allocation. While this play requires a significant amount of time for meeting with students, for assessments and for regular office hours, some of that time does come from the time that would otherwise be devoted to grading, and managing grading. Implementers may also want to think about how and when to allow assessments: during general office hours, during specific assessment hours, during lab or class time, etc.

See Also

• Chapter 15, “Formative Assessments are for Learning”

Source

Source: Fine, Benjamin T. 2024. Competency and Equity Driven Grading System for Computer Science Curriculum. In Proceedings of the 2024 Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 1 (ITiCSE 2024), July 8–10, 2024, Milan, Italy. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 7 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3649217.3653564

Described by: Amy Csizmar Dalal (adalal@carleton.edu)

Community Discussion

Community members are free to comment on, ask questions about, share experiences, or otherwise contribute to knowledge about this play by posting comments below. See Chapter 33. Join Our Discussions for details.

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