I worked on my Social-Cognitive Psych course description yesterday and settled on two changes from (all) previous years.
First, I’m going to require that students have – and use – a composition notebook. They’ll take their homework reading notes in it, and they’ll take in-class notes in it, because:
- research shows that notes that are handwritten are more memorable than those which are typed,
- open-note reading quizzes with Lockdown browser are only doable if the notes are separate from the electronic device that they’re using for the assessment itself, and
- I want to be able to order devices put away for distraction reasons
Second, grading is no longer calculated by simple points, and instead I am switching to a category-based system (weights shown below) because:
- I want homework, in-class assignments, and reading quizzes to count for very little in the class,
- I want tests to count for the bulk of the grade — as in a college course.
This change comes largely out of years of thinking about standards-based grading, and the assessment conference that I attended in Denver this summer.