Planning Bugs 101: Defining Standards
- Christopher Brown
- May 30
- 8 min read
Updated: Jun 9
This is a continuation of my Bugs 101 series, in which I document my thoughts and experiences as a first-time university instructor. Last week I discussed my course goals and objectives and walked through the process of alignment. This week I have been developing the assessment structure for the course before I start building out any of the performance opportunities.
Standards-Based Grading in a College Course?!
I decided early on that I wanted to go with a standards-based grading system. For those unfamiliar, standards-based grading is an assessment system which students are evaluated for their proficient performance related to a clearly outlined objective. In this system, students are given a set of standards which define what they are expected to be able to do by the conclusion of the course, and are given multiple opportunities throughout to demonstrate proficiency of these standards (Iamarino 2014). Though this grading system is more common in K-8 public ed, I chose this route for a few reasons.
First, standards-based grading allows for very clear and transparent expectations to be set. This allows me to very plainly list the things that students will be expected to do from the very beginning of the course, and then teach them to use mastery rubrics as they develop and refine these skills.
Second, this system focuses on performance over knowledge. The assessments and course structure emphasize how students perform, rather than what they know. This is especially important as this course is designed to develop transferrable skills rather than prepare these non-STEM majoring students for a career in entomology.
Third, I am purposefully avoiding makeups, and this system affords me that privilege to some degree. I noticed very quickly during my TA-ship in the lab last year that a ton of time was being spent chasing students down, arguing about excused vs. unexcused absences, and trying to coordinate times for makeups. When students did show up, I was less than motivated to walk them through a 30 minute mini-lecture and then participate in a lab with them for the fourth, fifth, or sixth time. The kicker here was that often the skills or knowledge being developed had often already been assessed and provided the student with little more than a grade. These activities to be coordinated for completion's sake distract from the educational progress being encouraged and eat up valuable student and educator time that could be spent providing valuable feedback or preparing students for their next assessment opportunities. By moving away from the traditional 100 point grading system, and by providing multiple opportunities for students to demonstrate their abilities, I can supplement student progress due to absences as needed and there will usually be another opportunity for demonstration in the future.
Fourth, this system also demonstrates a clear focus on learning rather than collecting enough points. Differing from my experience in Middle Schools, these college students are supremely motivated by collecting "enough" points to pass the class rather than learning how or why they are being asked to perform a certain way. This allows me to avoid punishing students for struggling, not testing well, or not performing at a specific time. I've always been a hater when it comes to taking points off for late work, I believe that a grade should reflect ability and reducing an assignment to a maximum score of 90% because it's a day late does not reflect that student's ability. If students submitting work at a specific time is a priority for formative assessments, than an instructor shouldn't accept late work. But that also means the student should have some other opportunity in the future to demonstrate their ability again.
I recognize that this system makes a lot of sense theoretically and you may be critical of how it looks in practice. I will need to make some changes to better fit the structures that students are accustomed to, as well as meet the grade reporting systems of the university, but in my experience using a similar system with middle schoolers the benefits outweight the drawbacks. This is one of the things I'm most looking forward to implementing and reflecting on later.
Setting the Standards
With my standards-based boots all laced up, it's time to start doing the work and selecting standards to assess, making sure that these standards align to the goals and objectives of the course and the identified goals set by the Center. If you haven't read my previous post where I hammered all that out, you'll want to jump over there and take a gander.
This process of building out course goals, keeping in mind a standards-based structure, and then rutinely returning to the missions, values, and goals set by the Center was a complex process but led to the development of seven "standards" that could be assessed and would directly align to the CISGS Goals and ISB Competencies/Sub-Competencies. I decided to go with a active present tense verb for each of these to highlight the action side of each standard.
In Bugs 101, students will be able to...
Contribute
... to the learning environment by attending class, being engaged, and equitably dividing up group tasks.
This takes care of the attendance and participation issue. Deep in my little teacher heart, I'd rather not take attendance. If a student wants to never attend class, that's their perogative. If a student can miss every class and pass the class still, either (a) they deserved it or (b) the class was not set up well. That being said, this course is being taught in the Fall to mostly freshman and building in the supports that ensure they have a chance at success is worth the pesky participation grades. This is the one grade category for this course that will be assessed differently, but more on that later.
Design
... products that demonstrate attention to detail, creativity, innovation, and flexible thinking.
This standard lets me assess students on the "artsy" side of assessments. The goal here is not to punish students for not being creative, but being able to build engaging and carefully crafted presentations/visuals is an important skill. A resume with typoes, a switch in font and size midway, and clashing colors is not going to earn an advertising major any brownie points. This standard also gives students that prefer demonstrating their understanding in more creative, less traditional, avenues a chance to be successful as well.
Expand
... their perspective by making predictions, identify connections, and draw conclusions.
I will admit this is one of the weaker standards for the course, but meets both the needs for students to appreciate different perspectives, make predictions, and demonstrate cultural competence in their work. Students will be asked to reason different perspectives during research projects, recognize the importance of insects in other cultures, and also make predictions related to climate change and shifting habitat ranges, temperatures, ocean levels, etc. I tried to roll these up into one category, and I guess I'll report on how well it works out at the end of the semester.
Find
... evaluate, use, and appropriately cite sources from their research.
This standard asks students to demonstrate information literacy and allows students to be assessed on their ability to accurately cite information, responsibly acknowledge the use of AI, explain the value in different information sources, etc. This also allows for students to be separately assessed on these skills, which they'll use a number of times in this course, but also are important skills they'll be asked to rely on throughout the remaineder of their academic experience.
Know
... some basic information about insects, and their relationships with both society and the environment.
I didn't want to deviate too far from traditional post-secondary structures, and assessing the foundational information is going to be important if students are being asked to complete more complex tasks with said information. This standard least fits the 4-point grading system I ended up going with, but more on that later. Assessments related to this standard also allow students that perform better in traditional academic settings to demonstrate their understanding as well.
Model
... their thinking by interpreting, using, and building graphs, figures, diagrams, manipulatives, etc. to support their claims.
Modeling is one of those terms that I think people have too narrow a concept on. Traditionally, modeling is discussed when we consider the way students visualize data as graphs, or in the way they build diagrams to show processes. Models can also be tactile representations, maps, diagrams, equations, really anything that simplifies or demonstrates a concept or process. Typically when we assess data literacy, we evaluate whether students can interpret graphs, transform data and choose appropriate visuals, and include the necessary elements; which I am still assessing. But this standard is broader so that it allows students to be assessed on the way they explain or demonstrate their understanding visually or graphically. Students may be asked to construct a metaphor to explain a process, or explain a phenomenon "like I'm 5" and this would constitute an evaluation of their modeling ability.
Reason
... logically and provide the support and explanations that helped them develop their claim.
The final standard, Reason, evaluates the written aspects of student work. I'm a major proponent of concretely teaching the structure of claim, evidence, reasoning (CER) and found that - especially with my 7th graders - explaining argumentative writing in a formulaic way built up student confidence related to writing early on and built capacity for them to grow into more complex tone and strcture later on. Being able to construct and clearly explain an argument is a very powerful skill, and this is something I will be spending a lot of in-class time discussing and having students practice in this course.
The Rationale
A lot of my thinking and manipulating as I developed these standards happened in Mural, which is sort of a whiteboard tool. I liked having infinite space, but going forward I don't see myself using Mural more as text was really difficult to copy into, or out of, and Canva, One Note, or Slides could have done a similar job In typing this up, I also seem to have been locked out of my own Mural, so I'm glad I exported the PDF when I did. Below is a screenshot from the larger Mural, where you can see each of the ISB Competencies and Sub-competencies listed, as well as the CISGS Goals listed. Below you can see the seven standards and stacked above each is the label for the goal or competencie to which the standard aligns.
This is not the best visual for this explanation, but the full file is huge and starts getting into the nitty gritty. For those curious I've linked the file just under the image, but each component will be explained in subsequent weeks and reviewed in greater detail. This feels like a convenient place to stop before getting into the 4-point grading system and corresponding mastery rubrics for each of the standards, best saved for next week!
TL;DR - This week I'm building on the goals and objectives I outlined last week and tackling assessment structure. I've decided to go with a standards-based system, each of which align to a goal or competency as defined by the Center in which this course is nested.
References:
Iamarino, D. L. (2014). The benefits of standards-based grading: A critical evaluation of modern grading practices. Current Issues in Education, 17(2).
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