"Adventures with Grading Contracts" by Susan Cholette

Topic

University courses, especially those in STEM subjects, have traditionally assessed student learning with a few high-stakes assessments, such as final exams. However, pressure to improve graduation rates and the student experience, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated disturbing trends in student engagement and mental health, have caused us to reexamine how we deliver and evaluate students in our courses. In this presentation of an already published study, we discuss our experiences using grading contracts, which are commonly used in writing programs but virtually unknown in fields like operations research or data analytics. Based on our limited sample size, we found strong student support for the contract and no statistically significant differences in final course grades nor in student learning outcomes. We will conclude the presentation with a discussion of your experiences with and opinions about contract grading, whether from the vantage of being a student or an instructor.