

5 – Getting Started Part 3: Developing your Grading Architecture
In this episode, Sharona and Bosley describe the four decisions that make up the "Grading Architecture" of an alternatively graded course.
- How will you assess your learning targets?
- What type of proficiency scale(s) will you use?
- How will students show proficiency for a specific learning target? (I.e. how much evidence and of what kind to they need to provide)
- How will you wrap up into a final grade?
After introducing the four decisions, they explore some examples of common options used for each of the decisions. This includes:
- What types of evidence of learning will you accept?
- Exploring three common types of proficiency scales - 2 level, 3 level and 4 level scales
- Describing different methods for determining proficiency on a specific target (the Guskey method, N times, and decaying average)
- Evaluating options for rolling up grades, including the simple count method, the bucket method, and the "good to great" method with multiple levels of proficiency.
Resources
The Grading Conference - an annual, online conference exploring Alternative Grading in Higher Education and K-12.
Some great resources to educate yourself about Alternative Grading:
Recommended Books on Alternative Grading:
- Grading for Growth, by Robert Talbert and David Clark
- Specifications Grading, by Linda Nilsen
- Grading for Equity, by Joe Feldman
The Grading Podcast publishes every week on Tuesday at 4 AM Pacific time, so be sure to subscribe and get notified of each new episode. You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram - @thegradingpod. To leave us a comment, please go to our website: www.thegradingpod.com and leave a comment on this episode's page.
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Music
Country Rock performed by Lite Saturation
Country Rock by Lite Saturation is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.