Time/Date: April 3, 2025 (3:30-5:00 pm)
Speaker: Linda Nilson, Clemson University
Title: Specifications Grading: Reclaim Your Time, Sanity, and Love of Teaching
Abstract: A grading system should operate transparently, motivate students to learn and excel, uphold high standards, promote student use of our feedback, and allow you to have a life. Further, it shouldn’t generate conflict with your students or stress for either you or them. How well does our current grading system deliver these goods? No wonder many faculty are considering alternative grading systems. This workshop presents one such system, specifications (specs) grading, that has only three elements and many options within them. You will hear evidence from many dozens of users that it restores rigor, motivates students, and saves faculty time, as the subtitle of the 2015 book that introduced it claims. This evidence will appear in the forthcoming 2nd edition of Specifications Grading. It’s also preferred by students and easy to implement in any size class and on any platform.
Bio: Dr. Linda B. Nilson
Linda B. Nilson, Ph.D. is founding director emerita of the Office of Teaching Effectiveness and Innovation (OTEI) at Clemson University. Previously, she directed teaching centers at Vanderbilt and UC Riverside and was a sociology professor at UCLA. She held leadership positions in the POD Network, Toastmasters International, Mensa, and the Southern Regional
Faculty and Instructional Development Consortium. Her career as a full-time faculty development director spanned over 25 years before she semi-retired in 2016.
Nilson authored the first four editions of Teaching at Its Best: A Research-Based Resource for College Instructors and co-authored the fifth edition with Todd Zakrajsek (Jossey-Bass, 2023). She also wrote The Graphic Syllabus and the Outcomes Map (Jossey-Bass, 2007), Creating Self-Regulated Learners (Stylus/Taylor & Francis, 2013), Specifications Grading: Restoring Rigor, Motivating Students, and Saving Faculty Time (Stylus/Taylor & Francis, 2015), Creating Engaging Discussions with Jennifer Herman (Stylus/Taylor & Francis, 2018), the first and second editions of Online Teaching at Its Best, with Ludwika Goodson (Jossey-Bass, 2018, 2021), and Infusing Critical Thinking into Your Course (Stylus/Taylor & Francis, 2021).The second edition of Specifications Grading with Joe Packowski is forthcoming from Taylor & Francis.
In addition, she co-edited Enhancing Learning with Laptops in the Classroom (Jossey-Bass, 2005) and Volumes 25-28 (2007-2010) of the POD Network’s To Improve the Academy. She has published many articles and chapters and has given over 600 live and virtual presentations at conferences, colleges, and universities nationally and internationally.
Nilson was a National Science Foundation Fellow at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where she received her Ph.D. and M.S. in sociology. She completed her undergraduate degree in three years at UC Berkeley, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.