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Specifications Grading 2.0
This second edition of the alternative grading classic revisits specs grading with a robust body of research, exemplars, and strategies to elevate the quality of student work, increase engagement and buy-in, reduce faculty stress, and cultivate students' career competencies.
Nilson and Packowski present the unique characteristics of the specs grading schema, all of which simplify faculty decision making, reduce antagonism between the evaluator and the evaluated, and increase student receptivity to meaningful feedback, thus facilitating a mutually beneficial, rigorous learning process. Used consistently over time, specs grading can restore credibility to grades by demonstrating and making transparent to all stakeholders the learning outcomes that students achieve.
This book features five new chapters stemming from firsthand accounts of dozens of instructors actively using specs grading and new material in six of the remaining eight chapters. It lays out the surprisingly simple transition process, positioning specs grading as the most viable and easy-to-use system available to faculty.
Nilson and Packowski present the unique characteristics of the specs grading schema, all of which simplify faculty decision making, reduce antagonism between the evaluator and the evaluated, and increase student receptivity to meaningful feedback, thus facilitating a mutually beneficial, rigorous learning process. Used consistently over time, specs grading can restore credibility to grades by demonstrating and making transparent to all stakeholders the learning outcomes that students achieve.
This book features five new chapters stemming from firsthand accounts of dozens of instructors actively using specs grading and new material in six of the remaining eight chapters. It lays out the surprisingly simple transition process, positioning specs grading as the most viable and easy-to-use system available to faculty.
246 pages, Paperback
Published September 14, 2025
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October 4, 2026
Solid, and I do intend to use it in a course I'm designing this next year. However, I have seen a substantial upswing in the capacity for AI to generate "authentic project products". My students are savvy enough to personalize the output, but AI plays a large role in the cognitive offloading of the generative struggle I'm interested in students working through on their own. I'm not interested in having students write everything in class, by hand. Nor am I interested in playing AI police. This book really emphasizes the use of writing and projects, but I'm looking for other strategies that aren't as easy to offload and that don't require me to watch a huge number of student videos (in which they read AI scripts anyway). Also, Blackboard is inexplicably missing from the list of LMS guides in the appendix.
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