Infinite Resubmissions: Perspectives on Student Success and Faculty Workload

Abstract

A commonly used college grading model relies on assignments and assessments that are graded on a points (0-100) scale. Some students will then spend time to revisit the assignment, investigate their mistakes, and possibly seek help from the instructors, but this is not always enforced, and many students will likely not do so. If an instructor were to require students review the past assessments and associated rubrics/feedback, it would contribute to the students' growth but could take significant faculty time and effort. Pedagogical models, such as competency-based or mastery-based assessment, give students multiple opportunities to prove expertise over the material, while providing transparent grading and feedback. Encouraging students to focus on improvement rather than grades does require a considerable investment from the instructor, but it can better motivate students and scaffold their educational growth. Three existing undergraduate courses were converted from a traditional (0-100) to competency-based grading, including one course that incorporated attributes of gamification. The assessment scheme and associated rubrics included four competency levels: beginner, developing, competent, and proficient. The courses, all within Electrical and Computer Engineering, include two junior programming courses and a specialized junior-level technical elective. As part of the new course models, the students were allowed to resubmit their work as often as necessary to achieve an assessment of competency or proficiency. Students could not pass the courses without achieving at least competency in each level, and their letter grade was determined by how many topics in which they achieved proficiency. Thus, it forced students to revisit their quizzes, exams, and assignments and resubmit (and improve) work until they reached a satisfactory assessment level. In this work, we will discuss the pedagogical details of the courses and the assessment model and analyze the impact of the “infinite resubmission” policy on student feeling of success, student grades, instructor perspective on student engagement and growth, and faculty time and effort. This will include both qualitative and quantitative analyses for the three different courses, comparing and contrasting what was successful and what was not, as each course had different concepts, assessment strategies, class sizes, and delivery modalities.