Alternative Grading in an Upper Level Neuroscience Course: A Pilot Study (2024)

Undergraduate: Shriya Pokala

Faculty Advisor: Rachel Penton
Department: Psychology and Neuroscience

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Grades are a conventional facet of education, often assumed to be effective and valuable simply because of their expansive use. However, some educators are transitioning to alternative grading, an approach that seeks to reduce the use of points in assessing and communicating student learning (Blum, 2020). Higher education STEM courses have been comparatively slower to transition, but alternative grading has shown improved student outcomes and well-being in these courses (Howitz et al., 2021 and Katzman et al., 2021). Therefore, we are interested in seeing how implementing alternative grading in a neuroscience course will impact students' stress and perceptions on grading. We designed a pilot study where we researched different implementations of alternative grading in college STEM courses to inform the design of the future alternatively graded course. A survey was also created to assess current student perceptions on grading and stress in traditionally vs alternatively graded courses. Overall, alternatively graded students had more positive perceptions on course grading and responded more favorably about the stress caused by their grades, though not significantly different from traditionally graded students with the exception of their perceptions on how often they thought of their course grades (p=0.0033). Based on these results, the survey was simplified and certain items were clarified. In the future, the survey will be given to a larger number of students, including the students in the alternatively graded neuroscience course to assess if their perceptions on stress and grading are different from those who are in traditionally graded neuroscience courses.