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Grant program: Teaching and Learning Development Grant (TLDG)

Grant recipient: Maya K. Gislason, Faculty of Health Sciences

Project team: Angel Kennedy, research assistant

Timeframe: August 2021 to June 2022

Funding: $5,000

Course addressed: HSCI 835 - Social Determinants of Health

Description: For this project, I would like to find out how we can modify the grading system to promote mental well-being for students engaging with complex and reflection-based content. In past years, assigning grades to HSCI 835 students has been challenging, given the array of assignments that require students to integrate theory with experience, and apply these insights to practice as well as the expectation that students will share their reflective practices throughout the assessment process. When students are constrained by rubrics and worried about their grades, feelings of peer competition, grade anxiety, and lack of risk-taking may arise, which may consequently create a restricted learning environment. With the effort-based grading system we are interested in trying out, the more efforts, assignments, and responses to feedback a student shows, the higher their grade will be in the course. Through adopting this assessment method, we anticipate this will create a culture of support, a community of compassion, an improved learning environment, and therefore improved mental wellbeing among students.

Questions addressed:

• How does an effort-based grading system impact the mental health of graduate students during and after the term ends
• How does an effort-based grading system impact student engagement with and reflection about the material related to the study of the social determinants of health?
• How does an effort-based grading system impact levels and kinds of student collaborations in class?
• How does an effort-based grading system and assignments impact students’ levels of anxiety about their academic performance and grades in the class?
  

Knowledge sharing: We will share our findings with faculty members through presentations in Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS) research symposia, faculty meetings, and engagement with the FHS communications team who can share our analysis more broadly. We would also like to share our findings with the graduate VP academic in FHS to discuss the findings of our work and to explore next steps.