The Future of Assessment in STEM Lecture Series

The Future of Assessment Lecture Series Welcomes: 

Dr. Justin Houseknecht  

Professor Of Chemistry and Department Chair  

Wittenberg University  

Tuesday, November 29th, 2022

Held Virtually via Zoom (Link Below)

Dr. Justin Houseknecht

 


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.

 

 

The Lecture Series is presented by the Department of Mathematical Sciences and the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cincinnati. It is sponsored by the Office of the Provost for the Strategic Collaborative Faculty Team Project Fund. 

To Register and Join the Lecture, Please Click Here