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Impacts of specifications grading on students and instructors (Fall 2023 - Spring 2025)

Research Question(s):

RQ1: Does implementing a full-course specifications grading system impact:

1. student performance, course grade, or perceptions?
2. instructor and/or teaching assistant perceptions?

Study Participants: 

• 661 students across two iterations of 9 courses representing STEM and non-STEM disciplines
  • Control (traditional grading): n = 318 students
  • Treatment (specifications grading): n = 343 students 
• 9 instructors and 29 teaching assistants
  • Control (traditional grading) = 9 instructors and 15 TAs
  • Treatment (specifications-based grading) = 9 instructors and 14 TAs

Intervention & Study Design:

Proponents of specifications grading claim that it has positive impacts on students (e.g., lower stress, stronger motivation, higher quality of work) and instructional staff (e.g., less time spent grading, less time negotiating grading disputes with students) (Nilson, 2014; Nilson & Packowski, 2026). Although many of these claims rely on anecdotal evidence, empirical research on specifications grading is concentrated in STEM fields, varies in methodological rigor, and yields inconsistent findings. Our study addressed these limitations and tested central claims at scale across nine courses.

Instructors collaborated with educational development experts at the Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence & Educational Innovation to transform the traditional grading system in one of their courses to specifications grading. Specifications grading is a form of alternative grading in which students receive a binary grade of “satisfactory” or “not satisfactory” on each course assessment (Nilson, 2014) depending on their demonstrated competency. The accumulation of the type and/or number of satisfactory assignments earns the student a particular course grade. See Table 1 for an example of course grades determined with specifications grading.

Table 1. Examples of specifications transformation types.

Across two semesters, instructors taught two iterations of their course as a part of this research study (see Figure 1). In the control semester, instructors used a traditional points-based grading system. In the treatment semester, they used specifications grading. Instructors kept course delivery, content, and assignments the same across both semesters. Researchers  randomly assigned to the order in which instructors taught their courses (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Study design for the order of teaching conditions.

Data Sources: 

1. Student performance on targeted assessment(s) of a prioritized course learning objective
2. Final course grade earned
3. Student pre/post survey:
   1. Self-efficacy regarding course learning objectives
   2. Motivation (Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire, Pintrich & De Groot, 1990) including subscales of self-efficacy, intrinsic value, and academic anxiety
   3. Academic stress (Bedewy & Gabriel, 2015)
4. Student post-only survey of perceptions of the grading system
5. TA post-only survey:
   1. Previous TA experience
   2. Perceptions of their present grading experience
6. Instructor post-only survey
   1. Perceptions of their present grading experience
   2. (specifications semester only) Perceptions of converting the course to specifications grading & future grading system preference
7. Student GPA obtained from the university registrar (used as a covariate in statistical analyses).

Findings:

RQ1a: Specifications grading did not impact student performance (see Figure 2), grade distribution (see Figure 3), or pre/post perceptions. Four survey items on the post-only survey revealed  that students in the traditionally graded course had more positive perceptions than did students in the specifications course. These items included clarity of how their course grade was earned, clarity for how assignments were graded, sense of control over their expected course grade, and feeling that their final grade reflected their knowledge and growth in the course.

Figure 2. There was no significant main effect of the grading system on student performance when controlling for students’ cumulative GPA, F(2, 379) = 1.12, p = .290.

Figure 3. Grade distributions did not significantly differ between grading systems, χ² (5) = 10.19,  p = .07, V = .12.

RQ1b: Specifications grading did not significantly impact any instructor or TA perceptions. Items showing a null effect included perceptions of grading workload, quality of student work, time spent preparing the course compared to their expectations, quality of the feedback they provided, and how much students argued for higher grades. Despite the lack of a quantitative difference between grading systems, instructors had a mixture of qualitative personal experiences with and preferences for the course grading system.

Eberly Center’s Takeaways: 

Our large-scale research study adds significantly to the body of literature empirically testing the impact of specifications grading on students, TAs, and instructors. We found that specifications grading did not affect student performance, course grade, motivation, stress, or self-efficacy nor any instructor or TA perception measure. The only statistically significant finding across all of our data sources was for four post-only items that showed that students in the specifications courses had less favorable views than their peers in the traditionally graded courses.

As such, we encourage instructors who want to experiment with specifications grading in their courses to consider their motivation for converting their grading system and any associated assumptions about benefits. Furthermore, instructors should consider the nontrivial, upfront, time investment for converting an entire course to this grading system and how they will reliably train their TAs to this new method. 

Future research can strengthen the empirical understanding of the impacts of specifications grading by further expanding the scope of the courses studied and by including courses beyond a first-time implementation. While we conducted the first (to our knowledge) study testing the impacts of specifications across a variety of course disciplines, class sizes, and student levels, having an even larger sample size of courses would allow for disaggregation across these variables to see if the effects differ by course context.

References

Bedewy, D., & Gabriel, A. (2015). Examining perceptions of academic stress and its sources among university students: The perception of academic stress scale. Health Psychology Open, 2(2), 2055102915596714.

Nilson, L. B., & Stanny, C. J. (2014). Specifications grading: Restoring rigor, motivating students, and saving faculty time. Routledge.

Nilson, L. B., & Packowski, J. A. (2026). Specifications Grading 2.0: Restoring Rigor, Motivating Students, Saving Faculty Time, and Developing Career Competencies. Taylor & Francis.

Pintrich, P. R., & De Groot, E. V. (1990). Motivational and self-regulated learning components of classroom academic performance. Journal of Educational Psychology, 82(1), 33.