Mastery Learning with Specs Grading for Programming Courses

Abstract

As professors, we want the students in our classes to succeed in mastering the material that we set out to teach them, but we must balance this desire with the knowledge that we have other responsibilities and a limited number of hours in the day. In this report, we document our implementation of a mastery learning inspired pedagogy using specifications grading in a software engineering course from the spring semester of 2022 in which 142 students were enrolled. Our two main goals with this approach were to reduce the administrative burden of the class with respect to grading and to promote mastery of course material while maintaining academic rigor. We provide evidence that both of these goals were at least partially achieved. In addition to outlining the structure of the course, we identify several areas where there is room for improvement with this approach and provide an overview of an online application we developed to facilitate the course.