Newlane Grading Policies

Updated July 2024

All Newlane University degree programs are competency-based. This means that passing a course is just a matter of demonstrating that you have mastered all the course goals and objectives (or intended learning outcomes), and is not tied to time in the course, or any other factor. In order to pass a course, students must demonstrate mastery of all course goals and objectives as determined by a course professor by completing a course project, a computer-scored exam and a course hearing–the course hearing is an oral exam with an expert in a video conference through the Newlane platform.

When a student submits a project, Newlane provides prompt, fair, and consistent feedback, including whether the project is approved or not yet, and whether a student has passed a course or not. 

Prompt: When a student submits a project, a Newlane course professor (note: all faculty members eligible to review a project or host a course hearing hold an advanced degree in a relevant field for the course) confirms with the student within two business days that they (the faculty member) agree to review it and they inform the student when they (the student) can expect to receive feedback (within one week). 

When a student participates in a course hearing, the hosting course professor provides feedback at the end of the hearing, including whether the student has passed the course or not yet.

Fair and Consistent: In order to assess fairly and consistently, Newlane faculty explicitly agree to base their grading determination exclusively on the student’s demonstrated mastery of the course goals and objectives as they are currently stated and not on anything else. Newlane professors use rubrics to evaluate student mastery on course projects and in course hearings. In order for a student’s project to be approved, the course professor must determine that the project fully meets all the rubric criteria for the project. In order for a student to pass a course hearing, the course professor must determine that the student has demonstrated mastery of all the course goals and objectives (the course hearing rubric and script make it straightforward for the course professor to make this determination). 

In assessing student mastery of learning outcomes (i.e., degree aims, course goals, or lesson objectives) Newlane professors agree to reference the following grading standards:

Clear: a student’s response must be unambiguous as pertains to the degree aim, course goal, or learning objective.

Accurate: a student’s response must be correct as pertains to the degree aim, course goal, or learning objective.

Thorough: a student’s response must fully address the degree aim, course goal, or learning objective (though it need not extend beyond the degree aim, course goal, or learning objective).

Detailed: a student’s response must contain appropriate examples or details. For example, a student’s response to a question about the objective “Explain the process of photosynthesis.” while a response like: “Photosynthesis is the process whereby plants consume light and carbon dioxide and give off oxygen” may be accurate and thorough, and appropriately detailed at the primary and secondary school levels, further details are expected at the undergraduate level. If a student provided this response, the faculty member would ask probing follow-up questions to ensure the student can provide a detailed response to reflect thorough knowledge of the topic.

If the course professor determines that the student has mastered all course goals and objectives, they select “APPROVE” the student for demonstrating full mastery of the course goals and objectives, or in other words, they approve the student for passing the course. The student’s educational record for that course is updated to  PASS: FULL MASTERY. If the course professor determines that the student has not yet mastered all course goals and objectives, they select “NOT YET”, and the student’s record for that course remains as not passed. 

In degree or course hearings, faculty evaluators use a rubric to help them evaluate student mastery. In order for a student to be approved to pass a course or degree, they must satisfy the evaluator(s) in the hearing that their responses reflect a level 5, as described in the rubric below. This rubric is flexible by design, and it is framed by the agreement the professor makes to attend exclusively to the learning outcomes as currently stated in evaluating student mastery in degree or course hearings. One of the important features of the Newlane platform is that it is structured around clearly articulated, measurable learning outcomes, enabling and facilitating this flexibility. See rubric below:

Degree/Course Hearing Rubric: 

APPROVED 5: Student responses are clear, accurate, thorough, and appropriately detailed (e.g., with relevant specific examples or dates, etc.) as pertains to the full statement of the goals or objectives for this course and course level; If the student did not initially answer accurately or thoroughly, or with enough detail about a given objective or goal, upon further questioning, their responses demonstrate accurate, thorough, and appropriately-detailed mastery of the course objective/goal.

NOT YET 4: Student responses are mostly clear, accurate, thorough, and appropriately detailed as pertains to the full statement of the goal or objective for this course and course level, but contained minor inaccuracies, or minor gaps in mastery over some part of the course goals or objectives; If the student did not initially answer accurately or thoroughly, or with enough detail about a given objective or goal, upon further questioning, their responses continued to demonstrate inaccuracies, or gaps in mastery for one or more goal or objective.

NOT YET 3: Student responses are somewhat clear, accurate, thorough, and detailed as pertains to the full statement of the goal or objective for this course and course level, but not enough to warrant further questioning about one or more course goal or objective. 

NOT YET 2: Student responses are inaccurate and/or reflect only partial mastery of one or more course goal or objective.

NOT YET 1: Student responses are mostly or entirely irrelevant to the course goals and objectives.

Accordingly, Newlane does not provide letter grades, but rather rigorously verifies and documents student mastery of all course goals and objectives before approving a student to pass a course (or degree).

Project Goals and Rubric:

In a project review, a course professor has access to the project and the project goals and rubric, and reviews the project to verify that the student has met all the goals. A project is specific to each course and can be a paper the student writes, a piece of music that a student records, an illustration a student creates, etc. Typically, course projects challenge students to synthesize what they have learned in the course in some media form. Projects have goals that the course professor will use in reviewing the work. In order to complete a project, a student must submit their project, and have a course professor sign off that the student has completed the project in order for Newlane to verify that they have completed the project. Course professors follow a rubric in evaluating course projects. 

Sample Philosophy Paper Goals

Newlane takes a competency-based approach to project-assessments and this extends to the standards course professors reference in evaluating student work. This means that students don’t get partial credit for partially meeting a target objective. Students either demonstrate the target objective, or not yet. If they don’t yet demonstrate a given target objective, course professors give feedback indicating as much, and appropriate guidance. Students can re-submit until they meet all the objectives. 

Following are sample goals for project-level essays in a philosophy course:

• Articulate a philosophical thesis that is clear, interesting, plausible, novel, and insightful.
• Write a focused and unified philosophical essay with effective word-choice and transitions between points. 
• Anticipate reader’s need for information, explanation, and context in philosophical writing.
• Draw upon primary and secondary source information in useful and illuminating ways to support key points in philosophical writing. 
• Effectively interpret and integrate quoted material (when applicable) into paragraphs in useful and illuminating ways to support key points. 
• Correctly cite sources in written work. 
• Makes arguments that are clear, reasonable, and sound in philosophical writing. 
• Offer clear and compelling reasons in support of key claims in philosophical writing. 
• Anticipate and successfully grapple with counter-arguments in philosophical writing.
• Write with correct sentence structure, grammar, punctuation, and spelling.

Project Rubric

On each project goal, the reviewing professor gives a rating from 1-5 according to the following rubric (the rubric is the same for all project goals for all courses, though the goals may be different): 

APPROVED 5: Student has clearly satisfied this requirement.

NOT YET 4: Student is close to satisfying this requirement, but needs a little more work.

NOT YET 3: Student has started to satisfy this requirement, but needs further development.

NOT YET 2: Student attempted to satisfy this requirement but is doing it in the wrong way.

NOT YET 1: Student did not attempt to satisfy this requirement.

In order for a project to be approved, each goal must receive a 5 (APPROVED) rating.

When the professor determines a project is complete, this is conveyed through the platform. If the professor determines that the project is not yet complete, they direct the student to which specific portions of the rubric/goals to address. Each course lists the required projects on the course page. Students must complete all course projects before they can schedule a course hearing.

Course extensions and Incomplete grades: Since Newlane courses are self-paced, there is no timeline or due date for assignment submissions, or for scheduling or completing course hearings (outside of satisfactory academic progress quantitative standard related to time to graduate). This means that there are no course extensions, or incomplete grades offered through Newlane.