Faculty working within a CBE framework do not award students letter grades when evaluating assessments.  Instead, instructors evaluate student performance using a verbal scale that reflects a learner’s proficiency at meeting a given competency.  (Students do receive a letter grade, however, as their final course grade.)  This is often referred to as “competency-based grading.”

The value in using verbal ratings lies in the fact they are more precise and objective, provide transparent appraisals of performance against a specific competency, and do not reflect actions unrelated to competency measurement (such as receiving a late penalty – which evaluates the act of not turning in a project, not a student’s performance). 

An example of a competency-based rating scale that has been used at Kirkwood includes the following verbal ratings: Exceeds, Proficient, Approaching Proficiency, Needs Work, and No Evidence.  The tiered system represents different categories of success in meeting a particular criterion on an assessment or overall course competency – which are often specific and clearly-stated.  Students whose artifacts or performances do not earn an Exceeds or Proficient are allowed to continue developing their skills with the goal of resubmitting their work or reperforming the given task.  In order to promote success, they are also provided constructive feedback from the instructor to guide the resubmission process. 

Although verbal ratings do not necessarily correspond directly to traditional letter grades, it may be helpful to think of Proficient as typical B-level work. Exceeds describes work that goes above and beyond expectations while Approaching Proficiency and Needs Work describe work that is not up to par.  No Evidence is usually used to describe situations where a criterion cannot be evaluated because the work was not completed. 

In a typical competency-based course, a student’s overall performance is evaluated against all course competencies.  A student must achieve Exceeds or Proficient for each competency in order to ultimately pass the course. 

Most performance-based assessments used in competency-based courses are accompanied by scoring rubrics which define the expectations for meeting proficiency.  Students who need to improve their work can typically reference the rubrics which explicitly outline expectations or success.

For example, this is how Kirkwood currently defines the ranges of proficiency in a CBE course within Talon: