Poster 22:

Centering Students when Evaluating Impacts of a Departmental Grade Alignment Policy

Catherine Rawn, University of British Columbia

Academic policy can impact faculty and students’ experiences of the teaching and learning environment; this research seeks to foreground student voices in such policy evaluation. Our context is a large psychology department with a longstanding policy restricting class averages, intended to reduce inequities across sections. The current study, co-developed with students, recruited 1234 undergraduates to an experiment exploring psychological impacts of a recent policy revision, and to comment on the policy. Taken together, quantitative and initial qualitative results overlap only somewhat, raising new questions about students’ experiences of grades, and how to engage students in academic policy (re)development.