Specs Grading Approach: The design of this specs scheme prioritizes a set of foundational learning objectives while encouraging students to engage in more complex ones. The low-stress environment created through choice, flexibility, and revisions allows students to focus on pursuing topics and questions that matter to them rather than worry about the grade.

Specs grading approach: The design of this specs scheme differentiates between quantity of work and complexity/difficulty of work relative to each grade level. It also emphasizes certain course objectives more strongly at different grade levels.

With its emphasis on student choice, flexibility, and revision, specs grading is well-suited to the goals of emphasizing writing as a process, and to reducing students' writing anxieties.

Specs grading approach: The design of this specs scheme differentiates between quantity of work and complexity/difficulty of work relative to each grade level as well as rewards risk-taking through a public education project. It also emphasizes certain course objectives more strongly at different grade levels. Students can choose to take this elective as a credit/no credit (pass/fail) course or for a grade. The specs grading scheme with its emphasis on student choice and flexibility is ideally suited to accommodate different motivations that students bring to the course (i.e. interest in mindfulness for stress-reduction vs. interest in the practice and the science of mindfulness).