Joshua Ruiter

Mastery-based grading

I use mastery-based grading in 100- and 200-level courses like Calculus 1 and Introduction to Proofs. Mastery-based grading puts the emphasis on learning over points, and puts students in charge of their own progress through the course by empowering them to easily understand their current grade and how to progress to the next grade. For details on my specific implementation of mastery-based grading, see the example syllabi for Math 171 (2026) and Math 2025 (2026) below.

I also wrote an article/guest blog post for Grading for Growth about a tool I developed to help communicate mastery-based grading with students.

Calculus sketch notebook assignment

In Calculus 1, I assign a semester-long sketch notebook assignment, to give students daily practice in sketching curves and connecting graphical and symbolic representations of functions. For one implementation of this see the Math 171 (2025) syllabus below.