Abstract

Student engagement has become a key phrase in academia and has become increasingly important in undergraduate education. While student engagement is often associated with student participation in classroom discussions, another way to look at it is having students more involved in their own course assessment. Students who take greater ownership of their grade will be both more motivated and more able to learn. The method by which students are evaluated can increase their engagement with the material, and, hence, their understanding of it, allowing them to better apply useful concepts and theories upon graduation. I developed a relatively innovative method of assessing students that gives students more control over how they are assessed. In other words, students choose their own assignments from a list of options. The assignment options are varied enough to allow for the success of students with varying learning styles. This paper describes both the potential gain of such a methodology of assessment, obstacles to the implementation of the point system, as well as providing specific examples of how it can be applied.