A Student’s Perception of Alternative Grading

Students often aren’t a part of conversations on alternative grading, so what do they think?

Elliott Tower, a carillon at Oakland University. Photo by Lance Markowitz.

Today’s guest post is the first we have ever had from an undergraduate student! Lance Markowitz (lmarkowitz@oakland.edu) is an undergraduate student at Oakland University pursuing dual bachelor’s degrees in business management and Spanish. He is a member of the Ungrading Learning Community, Service Learning Committee, Experiential Learning Committee, and serves on the advisory board of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. He organizes student panels on classroom engagement, authored an article on active learning, and has co-founded a program which trains students in conducting classroom observations and giving feedback. Overall, his focus is on facilitating dialogue between students, faculty, administration, and staff to help create more informative, impactful, and engaging classrooms.

My Story

I am not a good student. I struggle to focus in class, yet by most metrics I am high achieving. I have a 3.75 GPA, am in the Honors College, Co-Lead DOE funded Marine Energy research, and have a Co-Op with a Fortune 500 company. Yet, when you see me in class, I’m usually mentally distant from the slide show being presented. While I'm actually more engaged now than I was during my first year, my classroom struggles are not unique. My peers often appear similarly disconnected, something that is often misunderstood. We may struggle to stay focused, but that does not mean we’re apathetic. Personally, I am incredibly motivated to learn, but sometimes I need extra support in doing so. I know this now, but at the start of college, I just felt lost.

In fact, in my second semester of college, I wasn’t far removed from failing 4 of my senior classes in high school. It was in this second semester that I felt myself begin to slip again. I struggled to stay focused for long lectures, felt bored and inadequate, and as a result, lost interest in the information being presented. I no longer cared about long-term retention and focused all of my efforts on short term memorization strategies, so I could at least get good grades. I realized that my peers seemed to share a similar mentality, grades over learning. This mentality even bled into academic dishonesty. If grades were all that mattered, the path to those grades was less important. Consequently, almost everyone I know cheats. When I ask why, the answer is almost always the same, because they don’t see value in their assignments, only the grade received for that assignment.

This academic culture is problematic, and I wanted to be a part of the change. I joined forces with the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning which provides teaching support for Oakland University faculty. I also started researching pedagogy, joining faculty committees from across campus, presenting to faculty and administrators on active learning, and even surveying 600 Oakland University students on classroom engagement. As a result, my current work is a collaborative effort with faculty and students focused on making classes more impactful through increased classroom engagement.

I will therefore begin by breaking down the connection between alternative grading and classroom engagement, following with the importance of transparency in grading methodology, citing positive examples of alternative grading in my own classes, and ending by emphasizing the importance of ongoing dialogue with students on grading.

Increasing Classroom Engagement

Over the last 2.5 years, I have learned that so many factors go into making a classroom engaging. First, there is the classroom instruction. So, what makes instruction engaging? Two years ago, 620 Oakland University students responded to my questionnaire on classroom engagement. My goal was to include as many students as possible, so with limited resources, I chose convenience sampling. 72.6% of the student respondents reported that they found review games engaging, in comparison to other methods of instruction, such as lecturing from a PowerPoint, which only 30.5% of students reported as engaging.

When lecturing was paired with in-class problems and writing on a white board; however, that number jumped to 55.6%. I expected these results, but some results surprised me. Only 34.2% of students said interactive polling was engaging, which is surprising given that polling requires everyone in the class to engage. On the contrary, voluntary responses or questions answered voluntarily, were chosen by 53.7% of respondents. Ironically, voluntary questions in my classes are almost always met with low participation, as the same 3-5 students typically answer all of the questions. These results make me wonder if students were actually answering based on strategies they liked and disliked instead of based on their level of engagement. This was further reinforced by only 8.1% of students responding that random calling was engaging, a strategy that many students criticize due to its confrontational nature.

The data from this questionnaire is very helpful in making some overarching assertions on student perspectives, but in hindsight, the engagement questionnaire was lacking in depth, as I had not considered assessment and grading strategies as a vehicle of engagement.

The questionnaire undoubtedly highlights that most OU students find review games engaging, but equally important to the learning process is how the learning is assessed and graded. For example, I personally view projects as a far more impactful assessment of my learning than an exam. Moreover, the grading of these assessments plays a significant role in this impact, as exams are graded on correctness whereas projects are graded on quality, a measure I view as far more robust.

The four pillars of alternative grading are built for projects, because rather than being graded question by question like a test, projects allow for far more feedback, and feedback is impactful. I sent out another student questionnaire to see if these opinions aligned with those of my peers. With nearly ninety student participants, the respondents overwhelmingly selected projects as being more impactful than exams. Figure 1 identifies the results with 81.8% of students citing projects as more impactful.

Figure 1: Student responses on the impact of two assessment types

The assessment questionnaire also asked students which assessment type they preferred, with 73.9% choosing projects in comparison to 21.6% for exams. The last question allowed student respondents to share any other thoughts they had on assessments. Several students identified test anxiety as a barrier to accurately assessing learning, while many wrote about the additional research and creativity that go into making projects memorable, two attributes that are rarely part of test prep.

Transparency

While I prefer project-based classes, as the questionnaire reinforces, not everyone does, and this is especially true when grading is unclear. Students must understand the reasoning behind your teaching and grading strategies in order to support them. It’s important to note that faculty can teach in perfect harmony with data-backed strategies, but still face student push-back. A Harvard study helps contextualize this phenomenon, as it found that students felt that they learn better when being lectured to, but actually scored higher on tests when taught using active learning techniques. The paper goes on to identify how students' mindsets towards active learning change, once they are made aware of the benefits of such teaching strategies.

This phenomenon is further confirmed by faculty members at Oakland University that switched to active learning. These faculty are often surprised to receive negative course evaluations, but it’s important to note that just because their students are learning more doesn’t mean that they realize they’re learning more. Grading is no different. Students have a mental model of what grading is supposed to be, and differing from that model without proper explanation can lead to backlash.

To avoid this backlash, include an explanation of your teaching and grading style in the beginning of the semester. Most importantly, explain why your method of teaching and grading brings value to the classroom. My teachers almost always explain how they grade, but almost never explain how their grading reinforces learning outcomes. This transparency is key, which means that it's also crucial to allow students to give feedback, both in class and anonymously.

Alternative Grading in my Classes

For me, alternative grading is any grading system that deviates from my perception of normal. I expect to take exams, and I expect those exams to constitute a majority of my grade. With that being said, two examples of alternative grading in my classes come to mind.

The first is with my professor in Business Spanish: Communication and Journalism. For context, this semester has been particularly hard for me. I have been burnt out and even less present in my classrooms than normal. I’m always in attendance, but my attention span has only allowed me to grasp bits and pieces of what is being taught. While I may not be the best learner in class, I have taken my Spanish studies to a new level outside of class. Over a year ago, I approached this professor about connecting me with a language partner and he has since connected me with two native Spanish speakers. Now, my language partners are not only providing weekly practice, but friendship, which has transformed my Spanish.

At the end of the semester, I apologized to my professor for my lack of focus. He responded that he knows how hard I have worked outside of class, which is why he has been lenient in his grading of my assignments. I had never thought of flexibility as a key component of grading, but his level of understanding ensured that my learning was not overlooked, despite not fitting neatly in the box of assignments he had created. Of course, while communication and journalism were the main focuses of the class, he recognized that the foundational goal of the class was to help students improve their Spanish. I included this example because alternative grading does not have to be revolutionary nor incredibly time consuming. Simply taking the time to ensure that students feel supported in their learning endeavors can have a significant impact on overarching course outcomes.

The second example comes in my Management Strategies and Policies class. My professor told us that his goal was to prepare us for the real world. As a result, he challenged us to get engaged and to think differently. The class revolved around creating a business plan for a real start up business. In fact, the founder of the start-up actually attended our classes as a guest speaker throughout the year, and assisted in the grading of our final business plans and presentations. Similar to the real world, there was no grading rubric, simply parts of a business plan that should be included.

Initially, students grew frustrated with this approach. Many of my peers expressed frustration with “having no idea what they were doing.” This lack of support proved to be an area of weakness. Thankfully, the professor was constantly collecting feedback from students and pivoted mid semester, so he could give us more guidance. With all of this being said, I think our project only turned out okay. As a team of mostly graduating seniors, many of my peers were more focused on passing rather than personal impact. However, even with this understanding, I retained far more information from this class than in my other lecture-heavy courses. One of my peers relayed similar thoughts about the class, sharing that he enjoyed the class because of how closely our project emulated real work assignments. This example is important, because even without 100% effort from students, classes like this can still have a big impact.

Bringing Students into the Conversation

While none of my points may be groundbreaking, the biggest takeaway that I hope you have is that students must be a part of alternative grading conversations. Even if their opinions are not groundbreaking, a robust movement towards alternative grading cannot be pursued without student voices being included. I am proud to be an ambassador of alternative grading, but there are so many other students that are willing to share their input when given the opportunity. We see this at Oakland University in student panels and classroom observation programs, but there are also other ways to elicit this feedback. For example, classroom discussions are a great way to facilitate dialogue and come to a mutual understanding on teaching, learning, and grading.

Additionally, building rapport with students and encouraging them to disagree helps students feel comfortable sharing what they truly believe. Furthermore, for students that need more help with sharing their honest feedback, anonymous feedback forms help these students feel comfortable. Two way communication on alternative grading is so important, because students don’t like what they don’t understand, and alternative grading methods can be easily misunderstood.

Thank you so much for taking the time to hear my perspective and I would love to collaborate on classroom engagement and alternative grading initiatives, so please reach out!

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