I remain confused about the new attention to this practice. A handful of small “alternative” colleges have never had grades of any sort, just feedback and narrative evaluations of overall student-ing at end of term. Why do mainstream media act like this is a new invention? Maybe pay attention to the colleges that have never had grades or marks (and those inequities, honor societies, etc) and move to revolt against grades everywhere. Really, with rampant grade inflation, why are we using grades anywhere?
I think there are two separate things, and mixing the two up is part of the reason that there's so much attention right now:
"Ungrading" as a classroom practice (e.g. what we describe here) is hot right now and is getting lots of attention. That's genuinely new as a widespread practice, and it's caught the media's eye as a result.
Separately, "narrative evaluations and feedback with no final grades" has been around for a long time at a few places exactly as you say, but it's getting mixed up (intentionally or not) with "ungrading" (no grades on assignments). So it's being brought up as part of the "ungrading" discussion by confused journalists who don't realize they're not the same thing.
Finally, I think there is a culture war element: "Professors are doing this thing, I can make up a narrative where it's 'woke', so let's argue about it" gets clicks and viewers.
Great and helpful post but it confirms my belief that it should be called "Unscoring" or "Unmarking" because in most cases teachers have to provide a single subject "grade." The double meaning of "grade" is problematic because people think it is about eliminating grades. We need to use mark or score with a single meaning and grade with a single meaning (the summary symbol determined for achievement in a course or on a standard).
I definitely agree that the term "grade" is overloaded (this is why I like "mark" for individual assignments). And the term "ungrading" is definitely problematic for many reasons, including that it tends to point people towards the wrong thing (final grades). But about creating another term to try to capture these ideas... https://xkcd.com/927/
Thanks, David. I know change is hard - but "mark" or "score" for what teachers put on individual pieces of assessment evidence and "grade" for the summary symbol seems very clear to me.
I remain confused about the new attention to this practice. A handful of small “alternative” colleges have never had grades of any sort, just feedback and narrative evaluations of overall student-ing at end of term. Why do mainstream media act like this is a new invention? Maybe pay attention to the colleges that have never had grades or marks (and those inequities, honor societies, etc) and move to revolt against grades everywhere. Really, with rampant grade inflation, why are we using grades anywhere?
I think there are two separate things, and mixing the two up is part of the reason that there's so much attention right now:
"Ungrading" as a classroom practice (e.g. what we describe here) is hot right now and is getting lots of attention. That's genuinely new as a widespread practice, and it's caught the media's eye as a result.
Separately, "narrative evaluations and feedback with no final grades" has been around for a long time at a few places exactly as you say, but it's getting mixed up (intentionally or not) with "ungrading" (no grades on assignments). So it's being brought up as part of the "ungrading" discussion by confused journalists who don't realize they're not the same thing.
Finally, I think there is a culture war element: "Professors are doing this thing, I can make up a narrative where it's 'woke', so let's argue about it" gets clicks and viewers.
Great and helpful post but it confirms my belief that it should be called "Unscoring" or "Unmarking" because in most cases teachers have to provide a single subject "grade." The double meaning of "grade" is problematic because people think it is about eliminating grades. We need to use mark or score with a single meaning and grade with a single meaning (the summary symbol determined for achievement in a course or on a standard).
I definitely agree that the term "grade" is overloaded (this is why I like "mark" for individual assignments). And the term "ungrading" is definitely problematic for many reasons, including that it tends to point people towards the wrong thing (final grades). But about creating another term to try to capture these ideas... https://xkcd.com/927/
Thanks, David. I know change is hard - but "mark" or "score" for what teachers put on individual pieces of assessment evidence and "grade" for the summary symbol seems very clear to me.
I think we agree fully on that.