Another fantastic essay. I completely agree that broken systems shouldn't prevent us from making small changes (which might have big implications) in our own classrooms. As a personal note, sometimes I struggle with the opposite issue, i.e., I find it much easier to tinker with I'm doing in my own classroom than to do the hard but necessary work of contributing to more widespread systemic change.
That's an excellent point Greg. It's all too easy for me, definitely, to cocoon myself in my relatively safe academic world and have fun with all this, rather than stick my neck out for others. Part of the reason for this article is to remind myself of that.
FWIW - as a financially independent, semi-retired, adjunct assistant professor, I've felt a little guilty about my own privilege, which may outdo that of even a fully-tenured professor. I'm not paid a living wage, and I don't need one. I can pretty much teach however I want. 😁
My last professional role was as the US Lead for Academic and Workforce Development for a large, multi-national engineering firm, and in that role had the opportunity to meet many in the academic "industry'. TBH - we were pretty frustrated with what we saw, and in broad strokes this derived from two areas:
- industry knowledge had moved far ahead of professorial knowledge, and
- we just weren't that interested in the professor's assessment of a student.
In the aggregate we looked at GPA, not because it was valuable, but it was all we had. But I worked closely with our hiring managers, and the ones who were most successful built personal relationships with specific programs. I was particularly interested in apprenticeships through community colleges. In most large companies, engineering graduates must still progress through two years of Engineer-In-Training status... so what is the purpose of a 4-year degree, if graduates still need an additional two years of training before they are prepared?
BTW - with three engineering degrees and a 40-year career, I have never once been *paid* to calculate an integral, and let me tell you, that ship has sailed. Are students using the topics they are required to learn? Why would they pay for unused learning? (It might be valuable in an esoteric sense, but why would they pay for it? Go in debt, for it?)
My point being... the instructor's assessment really doesn't matter, and a systemic change is needed.
I teach a graduate engineering management course and tell my students in the first lecture that everyone will get an "A" in the course. (I have a fail-safe, in case a student blows me off, but in the past 100 students I've given only 3 A-minuses.) I greatly leverage the Agile and Collective Learning methods which I used in industry, and wrote on this for my LinkedIn blog (below). My students will learn more from each other than they will ever learn from me. (But I get to choose the topics of conversation. 😊)
That said... I am co-leading a Learning Community at Oakland U called "Unlearning Grading" and I hear recurring side comments that "I'll get a reprimand if I give too many A's", or "ABET (accreditation) is worried about grade inflation". Much of my own teaching focuses on the organizational dysfunction which leads to scandalous products (the GM Ignition Switch, the Boeing 737 Max, and autonomous vehicles). The 'dominant logic inertia' which creates that dysfunction also exists within our Universities.
My point... I think a systemic change is needed (BTW - I teach Systems Thinking), but likely won't occur until after a systemic shock. We're beginning to see that shock now, in both decreasing enrollment counts and wavering public and government support. We'll have to see if that is large enough.
But oh my goodness is there a need for authentic learning! And I applaud individual instructors for attempting new paradigms. But we'll need a truly new paradigm in which we motivate and prepare students for the next step without a reliance on grades.
Another fantastic essay. I completely agree that broken systems shouldn't prevent us from making small changes (which might have big implications) in our own classrooms. As a personal note, sometimes I struggle with the opposite issue, i.e., I find it much easier to tinker with I'm doing in my own classroom than to do the hard but necessary work of contributing to more widespread systemic change.
That's an excellent point Greg. It's all too easy for me, definitely, to cocoon myself in my relatively safe academic world and have fun with all this, rather than stick my neck out for others. Part of the reason for this article is to remind myself of that.
FWIW - as a financially independent, semi-retired, adjunct assistant professor, I've felt a little guilty about my own privilege, which may outdo that of even a fully-tenured professor. I'm not paid a living wage, and I don't need one. I can pretty much teach however I want. 😁
My last professional role was as the US Lead for Academic and Workforce Development for a large, multi-national engineering firm, and in that role had the opportunity to meet many in the academic "industry'. TBH - we were pretty frustrated with what we saw, and in broad strokes this derived from two areas:
- industry knowledge had moved far ahead of professorial knowledge, and
- we just weren't that interested in the professor's assessment of a student.
In the aggregate we looked at GPA, not because it was valuable, but it was all we had. But I worked closely with our hiring managers, and the ones who were most successful built personal relationships with specific programs. I was particularly interested in apprenticeships through community colleges. In most large companies, engineering graduates must still progress through two years of Engineer-In-Training status... so what is the purpose of a 4-year degree, if graduates still need an additional two years of training before they are prepared?
BTW - with three engineering degrees and a 40-year career, I have never once been *paid* to calculate an integral, and let me tell you, that ship has sailed. Are students using the topics they are required to learn? Why would they pay for unused learning? (It might be valuable in an esoteric sense, but why would they pay for it? Go in debt, for it?)
My point being... the instructor's assessment really doesn't matter, and a systemic change is needed.
I teach a graduate engineering management course and tell my students in the first lecture that everyone will get an "A" in the course. (I have a fail-safe, in case a student blows me off, but in the past 100 students I've given only 3 A-minuses.) I greatly leverage the Agile and Collective Learning methods which I used in industry, and wrote on this for my LinkedIn blog (below). My students will learn more from each other than they will ever learn from me. (But I get to choose the topics of conversation. 😊)
That said... I am co-leading a Learning Community at Oakland U called "Unlearning Grading" and I hear recurring side comments that "I'll get a reprimand if I give too many A's", or "ABET (accreditation) is worried about grade inflation". Much of my own teaching focuses on the organizational dysfunction which leads to scandalous products (the GM Ignition Switch, the Boeing 737 Max, and autonomous vehicles). The 'dominant logic inertia' which creates that dysfunction also exists within our Universities.
My point... I think a systemic change is needed (BTW - I teach Systems Thinking), but likely won't occur until after a systemic shock. We're beginning to see that shock now, in both decreasing enrollment counts and wavering public and government support. We'll have to see if that is large enough.
But oh my goodness is there a need for authentic learning! And I applaud individual instructors for attempting new paradigms. But we'll need a truly new paradigm in which we motivate and prepare students for the next step without a reliance on grades.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ungrading-why-i-give-nearly-all-my-students-patrick-hillberg-ph-d-/?trackingId=Br6gOdjNQJGlNC%2B76mVkVA%3D%3D