I am having lots of trouble keeping up with various commitments. Being here is one of them! But when I think of this place as a conversation rather than a set of settled statements, it helps. So, this is like the quick text I might send to a friend just to keep things going, even when I wish I had time to do more.
There’s an entire issue of Zeal devoted to ungrading, with contributions from Jesse Stommel and Robert Talbert, whom I follow, and several voices who are new to me. Talbert also recently published a “stop/start/continue for the ungrading community.“
One of Stommel’s simplest suggestions — and yet one I’m ashamed to have often skipped — is to have explicit conversations with students about grades and grading practices. I have a couple questions about this on my latest feedback questionnaire with my students. I linked to Stommel’s piece and to Kohn’s “The Case Against Grades” in the contexting for these questions, so students are invited to read those but not required to.
Here’s a (long) question and some of the responses so far:
Let's look specifically at Lab Practicals and the points/grades that go with them. Here's the 2nd lab practical from the fall semester — please review it briefly to remind yourself how points worked. My goals were for everyone to accomplish enough on the lab practical to demonstrate they'd learned the relevant ideas. Putting points on different aspects is a way for me to signal to you what is important. It's not that I actually care about the grade. In fact, almost everyone passes the 100% line. Would it be possible to describe what is important, lay out requirements, or some other idea that does not involve points, and achieve the same outcomes? Or are the points an essential motivation for making this work? - I am very motivated by points because I pride myself in getting good grades - I disagree, With my major I am very busy. If I saw something with no points to it I would add it to the last thing to do in my pile of work. - honestly not sure - I find the points to be motivating - I like the points for motivation, I felt like I would look at the material more and review it more before the lab practical. I felt that this made me feel more comfortable with the material more. I wish we did more of these lab practical's. for example, if we did 4, all 4 would equal the 2 we did in points. - the points are pretty important
I have lots of thoughts about why these (few) responses do not seem to support an ungrading approach. But what do you all think?
(Side note: If you’d like to click through to the Lab Practical assignment, you’ll see that it is very, well, “alternative graded,” I guess? There are more points available than needed for the assignment. So I’m getting some of these ideas in even if it’s not via true ungrading.)
So, what do you think about these students’ thoughts on points? What would your own students say?
Even with just a few responses, it seems like some maybe really different reasons for how/why grading motivates.
My mind went to Schinske & Tanner 2017 “Teaching More by Grading Less (Or Differently)” https://www.lifescied.org/doi/10.1187/cbe.cbe-14-03-0054
They have a summary of grading’s impact on motivation to learn, and close that section with:
“Rather than motivating students to learn, grading appears to, in many ways, have quite the opposite effect. Perhaps at best, grading motivates high-achieving students to continue getting high grades—regardless of whether that goal also happens to overlap with learning. At worst, grading lowers interest in learning and enhances anxiety and extrinsic motivation, especially among those students who are struggling.”
I guess rather than thinking these responses do or do not support ungrading, I’m wondering about the ongoing conversations and things to learn about how students feel about it and what it brings out for them. I think back to being undergrad getting C’s and D’s in my early chemistry, physics, and calculus, and that I felt very motivated by points. But I know I was terribly anxious about grades, and very motivated to avoid failing.
Sidenote-to-the-sidenote: I think we need disclaimers about what definition of ungrading we’re using, because I read “…even if it’s not via true ungrading” and had the knee-jerk “there is no true ungrading” response 🙂
This response:
hints at some of the important issues, I think.
1) What I do in my class seems like the most important thing to me but is only ~1/4 of what’s happening academically for each of my students at the moment (not to mention the 6-7 other semesters they spend without my fantastic ideas). It’s hard to imagine rewiring motivation pathways with my grading experiments compared to the majority of what they’re experiencing.
2) I have actually experienced this myself: I’ve taken a couple of courses where the basic assignments were laid out with requirements, and the “grades” were met/unmet for the requirements, and As in the course for everyone, just meet the requirements. So it’s sort of like specs grading. It’s great when things are going well. But when things start to pile up and I need to prioritize something, there’s no way to say “I’m gonna prioritize the final project but bail on the journal reflections and I’m ok getting a B.” Because there are no points or weightings, it’s sort of all-or-nothing in that case. That’s not a critique of all possible alternative grading schemes but does show one utility of points.
To 1 –
But isn’t that a critical part of any assessment strategy, to consider what’s going on with students in and out of the classroom? It applies to traditional assessment as well. I don’t think having physics, calculus, and chemistry exams on the same day, multiple times in a semester is motivating even if the point structure is clear. Or at least, the type of anxiety and failure-avoidence motivation some students might feel on that isn’t the type of motivation worth aiming for. I think the grading-and-motivation research is helpful for me in that area.
To 2 –
Against all advice, I opted to take my grad school classes Pass/Fail instead of graded because I didn’t want to think about them anymore. I failed one class because of a single incomplete assignment, in an all-or-nothing scenario. I’m wondering now, “would points and gradations have helped here?” Maybe, though I did opt into Pass/Fail. But I think the bigger issue was in a class where there were important things for us to learn, applications of that to what we’d do in research, and a range of backgrounds/contexts for the students, a professor designed an inflexible assessment strategy that made my situation a possibility. To me, that feels like a difference between *not grading* and having a critical lens of assessment.