The Future of Assessment in STEM Lecture Series

Just-in-Time Teaching and Specifications Grading
in Organic Chemistry

Formative and low-stakes assessment are among the most effective teaching methods to improve student metacognition, understanding, and performance (Hattie, 2009). Just-in-Time Teaching (Simkins and Maier, 2010) uses pre-class, formative assessments of learning to provide students in-class clarification once they realize it is needed, “just-in-time”. Adaptations over the last decade have produced a method that interfaces effectively with a low-stakes assessment strategy, specifications grading (Nilson, 2015). Implementations of specifications grading vary widely across the disciplines, but the commonality is explicit specification of student performance expectations. This implementation specifies a learning objective for each week of class; students must score greater than an 80% on a quiz over each foundational learning objective to pass the course. Passing quizzes over additional learning objectives (22 total, not all content-related) improve student grades by 2% per learning objective. Students can earn the opportunity to reattempt quizzes. These methods have improved student performance on cumulative final exams, course grades, and attitudes.