Student Reflection to Improve Access to Standards-Based Grading Feedback

Validation of an Instrument to Measure Student Engagement with a Standards-Based Grading System

“…Students' strong disagreement with regards to the timely access and use of feedback to guide their learning was confirmed in a prior study of their click-stream Blackboard access to their grades and their feedback [6]. That prior study showed that approximately 65% of students accessed the gradebook 20 or more times during the semester (a number commensurate with the number of assignment with LO feedback) to view their assignment grades.…”

“…The second source of validity evidence was an examination of the relationship between student responses to the instrument and another variable [23], [24]. Prior work has shown that students who engaged in structured reflection on their learning accessed their feedback more often than those who do not [6]. So it is hypothesized that students who do reflections will score higher on proposed factor 2 (timely review of feedback) than those that do not.…”

“…So it is hypothesized that students who do reflections will score higher on proposed factor 2 (timely review of feedback) than those that do not. Of the 1213 students, 226 were enrolled in sections of the course that used structure-reflection [6]; 874 were enrolled in sections that did no or minimal (e.g., minute paper) reflection. To test the hypothesis that the scores obtained for factors associated with timely review of feedback were higher for sections that did reflection than those that did no or minimal reflection, a Kruskal-Wallis test and a Wilcoxon Rank test were used.…”

“…Future research with the instrument will look at how different forms of structured reflection impact students' engagement with the SBG system. Prior work with one form of structured reflection showed that students accessed their rubric feedback to a greater extent than those who did no reflection [6], but the click-stream data analysis was cumbersome to perform on a regular basis. The validity evidence for the Engagement with SBG System Questionnaire suggests that it holds potential for evaluating student engagement with the SBG system more easily.…”

“…The true potential of these systems to improve student learning can only be realized through the engagement of each student with these elements, where engagement entails active awareness of course learning objectives (the standards) and expected performance, planning to learn, accessing of feedback, and subsequent actions. Prior work has shown that instructors find the initial workload to create an SBG system considerable [5], and students, unfamiliar with such systems, do not take as much advantage of the learning opportunities afforded by an SBG system as instructors would hope [6]. The workload to create a criterion-referenced system, coupled with students' lack of engagement with the system and thus stunted improvement in learning gains, can be a deterrent to curricular transformation.…”