Standards-Based Grading in Nursing Education: An Innovative Approach for Evaluating Student Clinical Performance

Purpose: While safe and effective student clinical courses are an essential component of nursing education, it often remains challenging for faculty to objectively assess student learning and assign course letter grades. The evaluation of nursing students in the clinical setting remains a subjective process, relying on faculty or preceptor observation of students’ performance and interactions. Historically, points-based grading systems have been used to determine how well students meet clinical learning outcomes. This type of subjective, observation-based assessment can be challenging nursing faculty to objectively validate. Well-defined systems of grading are rare in nursing education but to the extent that common practices exist, they have been conducted without a body of research to support the innovation. Standards-based grading (SBG) is a student-driven, criterion-based, clinical evaluation tool, which is aligned to a systematic grading system that accurately reflects clinical performance. This student-centered criterion-based tool reflects students’ clinical performance and is directly aligned to corresponding course assignment grading bundles. SBG has also been shown to encourage students to focus on learning rather than what needs to be done to earn a course clinical grade.

Methods: This multi-site, multi-method research study was designed to examine nursing student and faculty attitudes and perceptions regarding the incorporation of SBG in a fourth semester undergraduate nursing clinical course. For this study, IRB approval was attained, and students were assured that participation or nonparticipation in this study would not affect their grade, and the instructor does not have access to the research data until after final grades had been issued.

Results: The research study will be piloted in May, 2019 during the Weber State University summer semester and then further examined with 130 undergraduate nursing students and fifteen nursing faculty in August, 2019 during the Fall Semester. It is anticipated that this grading system will allow students to make a self-directed clinical course grading decision at the beginning of the semester by selecting pre-determined course assignment grading bundles.

In previous research studies that were conducted in higher education courses, it was found that this type of contractual work with pre-determined course requirements had the following outcomes for both students and faculty:

• Upheld students to high academic standards, which they self-select at the beginning of a course
• Motivated students to excel and promoted student accountability
• Minimized conflict between faculty and student related to course grading
• Made course and assignment expectations clear for students and faculty
• Fostered higher-order student cognitive development and creativity

Conclusion: We anticipate that the utilization of a standards-based grading system in an undergraduate nursing clinical course will foster course-grading transparency, student motivation, and enable faculty to objectively assess student performance and the achievement of student-learning outcomes. It is also anticipated that the results of this research study can be translated to a variety of nursing education courses and across all programs of study.