The Levels System

The penultimate version of my paper in Teaching Philosophy describing and advocating for the Levels System.

The most recent set of Level System instructions for my students.

The Levels System is a unique approach to teaching analytical writing to introductory philosophy students. Pedagogical experts will recognize the system as an instance of “mastery learning”. In the Levels System, students work their way through a series of repeatable writing tasks of increasing sophistication (aka “levels”). When a student attempts to complete one of these writing tasks, their paper is not assigned a letter or number grade. Rather, it is either marked “complete”, meaning that the student has demonstrated sufficient mastery and move on to the next writing task, or “not yet”, meaning the student will repeat the same writing task, but on a new topic, for their next attempt. A student’s grade is determined primarily by how far through the writing tasks they progress.