(138) Effect of Pass/Fail Grading vs. Letter Grading on Pharmacy Students’ Achievement Goal Orientations

Objective : In the Fall 2021 semester, the grading scale for a pharmacotherapy case-based recitation series was changed from letter grading to pass/fail. The purpose of this study was to determine how different grading scales affected students’ achievement goal orientations according to the 2X2 conceptual framework developed by Eliot and Harackiewicz (i.e. mastery-approach, mastery-avoidance, performance-approach, performance-avoidance).

Methods: Second-year pharmacy students enrolled in the course with the pass/fail scale and third-year students who previously took the course with the letter grading scale received a questionnaire with end-of-semester evaluations that contained a validated Likert instrument (Achievement Goal Questionnaire-Revised) designed to study students’ achievement goal orientations along four sub-scales. Respondents were paired by grade point average, Pharmacotherapy I course grades, and demographics. Descriptive and inferential statistics were applied to questionnaire results and demographic information.

Results: Surveys were completed by 99% of students (n=268). There were significantly higher means for mastery-approach (4.7 ± 0.5 versus 4.2 ± 0.8, p< 0.001), mastery-avoidance (3.7 ± 1.1 versus 3.4 ± 1.0, p=0.006), performance-approach (4.3 ± 0.8 versus 3.9 ± 0.9, p< 0.001), and performance-avoidance (4.1 ± 0.9 versus 3.8 ± 0.9, p=0.01) among second-year students who took recitations as pass/fail compared with third-year students who completed recitations with a letter grade.

Conclusions: Second-year students who completed a recitation series in a pass/fail format had significantly higher mean scores for each sub-scale within Eliot and Harackiewicz’s 2X2 goal orientation framework compared with third-year students who completed the series in a letter-grade format. Based on the results in conjunction with literature on goal orientation theory, it may benefit students in both pass/fail and letter-grade courses for pharmacy educators to encourage approach goal orientations while discouraging avoidance goal orientations.