A tale of triumph: A journey toward equitable assessment

Within these unique contexts, each instructor will outline their process of creating courses focused not on the cumulation of points as a determining factor of learning but skill and outcome mastery. The presentation will outline the utilization of student self-evaluation of learning, redesign of course policies, and a course narrative consistently returning to support of learning instead of “how many points until you pass.” The presentation begins by covering the orienting principles each instructor based their course from and how those principles were communicated to students efficiently and effectively in a fully online and asynchronous environment. Connections between the approaches of ungrading and mastery-based grading will be made throughout the presentations and how they diverged in each course.

The presentation aims not to present a one-size-fits-all approach to creating a more equitable learning assessment or the application of ungrading or mastery-based grading. Instead, each instructor can outline what they discovered was the best application for their unique online course structures. Each instructor will share their lessons learned and the changes made from one semester to the next as they discovered what worked, what failed miserably, and what needed tweaking. Even with the unique application of each instructor, and the unique forms of assessment designed and implemented, attendees will walk away with uniting principles connecting the applications of concepts in each online course.

Session Outcomes:

• Understand the basic principles of ungrading and mastery-based grading as applied to fully online courses.
• Learn changes to basic course policies to implement more equitable assessment practices.
• Be introduced to practices to create a culture of learning in an online course.