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Reimagining Student Success through Engagement and Soft Outcomes: Learning from a Capstone Course in a Canadian Polytechnic

By Clare Mulcahy and Ashique Khan

The authors of this essay noticed a recurring trend in their classes. A student would enter a class with a high GPA (grade point average) and leave with it intact. These types of students could be a delight to teach, but they could also go through the course without being significantly changed by it because they started the class with a level of competence that remained consistent. On the other hand, we’ve also taught students who struggled throughout and who might ultimately achieve a “C” as their final letter grade. For post-secondary institutions, funding organizations, and other societal bodies that use grades to judge academic performance, the individual who received a “C” will likely be perceived as weaker academically. Yet, in our experience, these students were often the ones who navigated their barriers to learning, who worked hard to tackle the course material and the assignments, and who truly progressed in terms of their own skill sets, which calls into question how we measure success. To better understand and work to address this issue, we reviewed the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) and asked: what would happen if we celebrated individuals’ personal development and improvement in terms of course goals instead of positioning grades as the sole indicator of success? This is the focus of our essay, as seen through the lens of the capstone class in the Bachelor of Technology (BTech) program at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT), located in Edmonton, Alberta (CAN). The authors of this essay are excited to join the larger body of SoTL that seeks to centre personal progress as an important marker of student success. 

Read the TLI article here.

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