Specifications Grading: A Before-and-After Tale in My Organic II Course

I implemented specifications grading (aka standards-based grading) for the first time in spring 2023, in my Organic Chemistry II course. Coming off a sabbatical that previous fall, I knew something drastic had to change from the last time I taught the course in spring 2022, where:

• Students were more disengaged than I’ve ever seen in my 20+ years of teaching.
• My office hours felt like a ghost town most days.
• Most students seemed devoid of growth-mindset.
• Student anxiety was at an all-time high, and it felt tangible.
• Students just didn’t quite have the resilience they used to have, especially if they didn’t perform well on an exam.
• The overall class performance on the ACS final exam ticked downward.

In my mind, specifications grading would help me tackle these growing problems. By replacing high-stakes exams with shorter, focused assessments that emphasized achievement instead of percentage grades, and by allowing students opportunities for retakes of those assessments without penalty, I was confident that I could reduce anxiety, promote growth-mindset, and improve student engagement, all while keeping the bar high. So, I jumped in with both feet.

Specifications grading can be implemented in a wide variety of ways, but for Organic II in particular, it made sense to me to adopt a modular format. I divided the new material for the semester into 20 “general” skill sets, with four general skill sets slotted into each of five modules:

1. Conjugation, aromaticity, and aromatic reactions
   1. Conjugation and aromaticity
   1. Mechanisms and outcomes of electrophilic aromatic substitution reaction
   1. Mechanisms and outcomes of electrophilic aromatic substitution and nucleophilic aromatic substitution reactions on disubstituted benzenes and other rings
   1. Synthesis involving aromatic substitution reactions
2. Spectroscopy
   1. Mass spectrometry
   1. Infrared spectroscopy and UV-vis spectroscopy: theory and peak identification
   1. NMR spectroscopy: theory and signal interpretation
   1. Structure determination using spectra, and finer details of spectra
3. Nucleophilic addition reactions (and related reactions)
   1. Mechanisms and outcomes of nucleophilic addition reactions, strong nucleophiles; and related reactions
   1. Mechanisms and outcomes of nucleophilic addition reactions, weak nucleophiles; and related reactions
   1. Synthesis involving nucleophilic addition reactions
   1. Redox and organometallic reactions, and intermediate topics in synthesis
4. Nucleophilic addition-elimination reactions (and related reactions)
   1. Mechanisms and outcomes of nucleophilic addition-elimination reactions, strong nucleophiles; and related reactions
   1. Mechanisms and outcomes of nucleophilic addition-elimination reactions, weak nucleophiles, and related reactions
   1. Synthesis involving nucleophilic addition-elimination reactions
   1. Biomolecules
5. Diels-Alder reactions, radical reactions, and polymers
   1. Mechanisms and outcomes of Diels-Alder, syn-dihydroxylation, and oxidative cleavage reactions
   1. Mechanisms and outcomes of radical reactions
   1. Polymers
   1. Synthesis involving Diels-Alder and related reactions, and radical reactions

I also identified eight “essential” skill sets from Organic Chemistry I, which lay the foundation for much of the new material for Organic II:

1. Atomic and molecular structure
2. 3D geometry, intermolecular interactions, and physical properties
3. Valence bond theory and molecular orbital theory
4. Conformers and constitutional isomers
5. Chirality and stereoisomers
6. Proton transfer reactions and charge stability
7. Elementary steps and driving force for reactions
8. Basics of multistep mechanisms

Then it was time to set up the rules. I say “rules,” because in many ways, specifications grading effectively gamifies the course. And here’s what I came up with:

• To pass the course, a student had to pass all eight essential skill assessments, and at least one general skill assessment from each of the five modules.
• To pass an individual assessment, a student had to score 80% or higher, with minimal or no partial credit.
• To pass a module, a student had to pass three of the four assessments within the module.
• Course grades were determined by the number of modules the student passed, their score on the final exam, and their grade from the corequisite lab course.
• For a student to retake a particular assessment, they needed to spend one token.
• Students could earn tokens by doing the kinds of things that characterize good habits
  • Actively participating in class
  • Scoring well on homework assignments
  • Attending and participating in recitation
  • Coming to office hours with questions in-hand
  • Going to peer-tutoring sessions

So, how did it all turn out?

One of the big wins was with student engagement, especially outside of class. The average number of office hour visits per student was 17 for the semester, ranging from 8 to 27.

Another big win was with growth-mindset and student resilience, as all 22 students completed the course for credit, with only 4 students (18%) in the D range. I believe that the improvement with growth-mindset and student resilience was a direct outcome of the retake structure for individual assessments, as students in the lower half of the class averaged 14 retake attempts for the semester. Students top to bottom stuck with it all semester.

Yet a third big win was with student anxiety. At the end of the semester, I gave an anonymous survey, on which I asked students to respond to the statement: The way we did specifications grading in this course helped decrease my anxiety compared to traditional grading with midterm exams. On a 6-point Likert scale, half the class answered with a 6, and another one-third of the class answered with a 5.

Despite these improvements, there was one area I didn’t see improvement, which was on the ACS final exam; the overall class average on the ACS exam didn’t go up like I was expecting. Reflecting on it later, however, I think I know why: The way I implemented specifications grading, students could succeed by focusing on one narrow set of skills at a time, whereas the ACS exam is cumulative over both semesters. Therefore, to see gains on the ACS exam, the system of specifications grading that I implemented could benefit by having a substantial cumulative element—something I’m still pondering how best to do.

Long story short: Because of the remarkable improvements I saw with student engagement, growth-mindset, resilience, and anxiety, I’ll say that for me, specifications grading is here to stay. I’m not going back to traditional grading with high-stakes exams.

-Joel Karty, Elon University