Wednesday, May 27, 2026

For Whom the Bell (Curve) Tolls? Classes That Yield Too Many A’s! - Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed

We are seeing colleges and universities across the country cracking down on grade inflation. There are multiple points of pressure that tend to inflate grading at both the institutional and individual faculty member levels. The flaw is not inherent in AI; rather, it is in the failure of faculty members to apply the technology in a way that cultivates learning among all students and accurately assesses mastery of the course content. Fortunately, we are now equipped by AI to effectively and efficiently implement mastery learning and supplant the age-old assembly-line model with a framework designed to enable all students, over time, to achieve mastery of the desired learning outcomes. The mastery learning model instead ensures that students do not progress through the course without achieving mastery of each module: “Mastery learning (or, as it was initially called, ‘learning for mastery’; also known as ‘mastery-based learning’) is an instructional strategy and educational philosophy, first formally proposed by Benjamin Bloom in 1968.