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Now that I've taken on a section of precalculus at the Rockville campus three days a week, it's been convenient to wait around in one of the shared office spaces between the end of class and the start of an afternoon professional development activity. Yesterday afternoon, for instance, I attended Jojo's presentation of implementing standards-based grading in MATH 181. Having participated in the SBG workgroup since last spring, I offered my perspective when asked, even though I only had the teaching experience of last summer to draw from.
I thought Jojo had a rather receptive audience, not an overly skeptical one. It's going to be hard to sell this new idea when we have such limited data for its effect on student learning. The strongest points raised today were the shifted focus of office hour conversations, and the influence on student behavior. The weakest point is an admission that only a handful of students are likely to see a different grade under SBG than under traditional grading, and the D/F students probably won't see much of a benefit.
I noted in Jojo's presentation a lot of emphasis on the ways SBG is a better fit for certain students, especially those who need extra guidance on which skills need more at-home practice. Another possible selling point is the way that SBG is a better fit for certain courses, especially those with a well-defined sequel and a clear linkage between skills mastery in the first course and success in the follow-up courses. In this vein I should mention my attempt to shoehorn SBG into the survey course MATH 110, with mixed results and difficulty deciding which skills must be mastered for a passing course grade. I opted not to try it again in my 110 course this semester.
The MATH 130 sequence does have a somewhat natural progression of concepts, so in theory SBG might work there too. However, if your main objective is to influence student behavior, by adopting SBG you forfeit the opportunity to use the points system to this end. Barry Spieler, for instance, sets aside a certain number of points from the course total, and splits them between the final exam and the optional presentation opportunities that appear throughout the semester. The more peer presentations a student does, the less weight the final exam carries. This practice has the same effect as SBG on reducing students' test anxiety, which is why I've adopted a variant of it in my MATH 110 course this semester.