Presented By: Logan Britton, Kansas State University
Co-Authors: Matthew Melchor, Kansas State University

Student engagement has been an important priority of instructors and shown to enhance student learning. In other academic disciplines, such as English, psychology and management, contract grading has been used as an avenue for student assessment. With contract grading, students agree to a set of activities or requirements for their grading criteria. This assessment technique has been shown to focus more on learning and less on the outcome. In a senior-level agricultural finance course at a land-grant university, around 40 students across two semesters were assigned a case study assignment to further develop their critical thinking skills. This assignment required students evaluate an investment decision by analyzing the financial, management and marketing aspects of the same agribusiness with a group of their peers. A portion of the students' grade for the case study assignment were allocated to their level of engagement in accomplishing the case study. Student groups were randomly assigned to either peer-grading or contract grading for this engagement score. Students were given pre- and post-test surveys to assess knowledge gained from the case study as well as gauge perceptions of their learning experience. Using analysis of variance methods, the data are analyzed among treatment groups. Initial results show that students in contract grading groups enjoyed the experience more as well as performed better on their post-test assessments. Further analysis will examine the difference in overall score on the case study, individual contribution to the assignment, perception of teammates' contributions, and fairness of engagement assessment methods.