Hi David, Sorry about your dance with COVID. I’ve read several posts in the STEM domain about the usefulness of target outcomes, success-not yet, and so on. So far a few points raise questions.
1. In every case the math teacher makes an individual list of targets, and it seems like the course is tightly organized and coherent. Must these targets be individually authored? Is there some way teachers can collaborate so that the work is shared? My experience at the university is as a professor of language and literacy—teachers used to collaborate to do this sort of planning with multiple benefits. I don’t see it happening much. Maybe it is and I just don’t know about it.
2. There is a lot of what some have called “I-ness” in the posts of STEM teachers involved in ungrading. I did this, I thought that, etc. don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to offend. The same is especially true among English teachers, my wheelhouse. The effect is sharing “my” experience, which makes me think an effort inside the institution to build a structure inside say Center for Teaching and Learning where all this individual work can become fingertip tools for everyone.
3. Do you involve students in self-assessment before you assess their work? Do they have any peer assessment and feedback? In this ungraded perspective which is highly individualized, what is the role of student collaboration?
Hi Terry - I'm certainly coming at this with a STEM perspective, although definitely informed by my colleagues in the humanities!
1. Lots of us share lists of standards -- there are even syllabus repositories for many STEM disciplines where these are shared in organized ways. But many people are generating new lists of standards on their own (and don't necessarily need to; connecting people with existing resources is a high priority!). I know of a number of cases where course coordinators create a list of standards for everyone in their courses to use, and other cases where multiple people teaching the same course share standards and collaborate on their creation. But generally, that depends on the instructors and the setting. Often there is only one person teaching a given class with alternative grading (even if there are others teaching it traditionally), so there's nobody to collaborate with.
2. Some CTLs are definitely starting to coordinate (e.g. see last week's guest post!). I agree that CTLs are a sensible place to start. Things like our book are also an attempt to get people together on a shared page, by creating some sense of common structure.
Thank you! I have a sense of how difficult it is to bring faculty together to discuss learning outcomes and grading issues, and I’ve been impressed with the model I’m seeing from a bit of a distance in the ungrading movement. In some ways, I can’t quite wrap my mind around the title “ungrading” because what you describe seems to me to be “explicit grading” and though the final grade is delayed, it is still a final letter grade. How is this final grade consonant with the success-not yet theme? In my mind, keeping the final grade while ungrading in the class doesn’t quite equal not-grading. I ask this because I see the same thing happening in the humanities. Teachers try to evoke persistence and the energy from intrinsic satisfaction and then—boom—there is still the power of the grade, the teacher as both mentor and judge. Is this even an issue in STEM? The disciplinary expectations are so different.
By learners collaborating I’m wondering about peers assessing one another’s work and giving an opinion about whether it is success-not yet, and explain to one another why. Then the self-assessment piece is also in play. The problem is students may not have the expertise to assess one another. The upside is in getting involved in “grading” which success-not yet is a form of, students may over time gain a second sense for where they are in the space between success-and not yet.
Anyway, I’m am fascinated by the co-existence of the grading problem across the curriculum. I read a study from 2023 in a STEM journal that used statistical models to adjust student aptitudes for learning in Humanities courses and in STEM courses. With an N of 3000, the finding that struck me was this; STEM students across the board have a GPA .25 points below Humanities students of the same aptitude. That speaks to a serious problem to me in that the word is out.v Don’t go into STEM if you want a better GPA. That’s why the final grade is salient to me. It involves the voice of the institution and not the teacher of record. In the end it will require CTL along with the Office of Institutional Research to make this a systemic cause, not small bands of malcontents titling at windmills, which I used to feel like when I was the University Assessment Coordinator at CSU Sacramento.
I'm not a fan of the term "ungrading" for many reasons, and you've identified some of them! In particular, essentially nobody "doesn't grade" as in "no final grade", so the term actively communicates the wrong idea (I've seen this happen when administrators first hear about "ungrading", it's not fun).
That said, there is a lot of power in de-emphasizing grades on assignments. Removing or reducing those, and/or making them less important (through reassessments) really does have an effect on how students think about a class. Even though there's still a final grade, these changes help them feel less stress about it, and also feel more in control of it.
I have not done a lot with peer assessment. I've never figured out a way for that to make sense in math (although I have occasionally tried). Self-assessment makes a bit more sense to me, as it can help reveal aspects of student learning that I couldn't see otherwise. But still, there is an expert aspect to evaluation that students, by definition, don't have while they are still learning.
I really value this exchange between you and Terry—thank you! I just wanted to add a note on peer assessment (something I’m also not comfortable with). I teach writing and music history and have moved to what I call “peer responding” modeled a bit on Peter Elbow’s Writing Without Teachers. It is interesting to see how they struggle with just reporting their own responses to the writing of their peers rather than “critiquing” and “evaluating” but I think it is invaluable. The students who are responding learn to be more self-aware and realize how a piece of writing impacts us as readers (even boring, technical, or academic writing), and the student author understands that their words trigger responses—some of which they might anticipate, others they never dreamed of.
Rebecca, that's quite interesting - I'm going to have to look into "peer responding" more carefully. It sounds like something that might be valuable for my students too, especially when they are writing proofs and trying to understand what information is important to include or leave out.
Absolutely. And they need that expert eye, what I call the eye from nowhere. That’s what I love about what little I know about ungrading. I’ve seen those online repositories of target bundles, and I think that idea is powerful. Twenty years ago I worked on a statewide portfolio assessment design team at Stanford which had an aspiration to create a “shopping cart” where professors could contribute a “signature assignment” with an assessment categorized in useful ways for rhetorical level and subject matter. It didn’t go very far, but the idea was great. Having taught middle school and then middle school teacher credential candidates, I’ve seen firsthand how grades begin to reduce their own expectations for themselves. I wrote my dissertation on assessment at a middle school. Thanks for this, David. You’re helping me clarify my understanding.
I love the idea of revision weeks and assignment weeks
Hi David, Sorry about your dance with COVID. I’ve read several posts in the STEM domain about the usefulness of target outcomes, success-not yet, and so on. So far a few points raise questions.
1. In every case the math teacher makes an individual list of targets, and it seems like the course is tightly organized and coherent. Must these targets be individually authored? Is there some way teachers can collaborate so that the work is shared? My experience at the university is as a professor of language and literacy—teachers used to collaborate to do this sort of planning with multiple benefits. I don’t see it happening much. Maybe it is and I just don’t know about it.
2. There is a lot of what some have called “I-ness” in the posts of STEM teachers involved in ungrading. I did this, I thought that, etc. don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to offend. The same is especially true among English teachers, my wheelhouse. The effect is sharing “my” experience, which makes me think an effort inside the institution to build a structure inside say Center for Teaching and Learning where all this individual work can become fingertip tools for everyone.
3. Do you involve students in self-assessment before you assess their work? Do they have any peer assessment and feedback? In this ungraded perspective which is highly individualized, what is the role of student collaboration?
Hi Terry - I'm certainly coming at this with a STEM perspective, although definitely informed by my colleagues in the humanities!
1. Lots of us share lists of standards -- there are even syllabus repositories for many STEM disciplines where these are shared in organized ways. But many people are generating new lists of standards on their own (and don't necessarily need to; connecting people with existing resources is a high priority!). I know of a number of cases where course coordinators create a list of standards for everyone in their courses to use, and other cases where multiple people teaching the same course share standards and collaborate on their creation. But generally, that depends on the instructors and the setting. Often there is only one person teaching a given class with alternative grading (even if there are others teaching it traditionally), so there's nobody to collaborate with.
2. Some CTLs are definitely starting to coordinate (e.g. see last week's guest post!). I agree that CTLs are a sensible place to start. Things like our book are also an attempt to get people together on a shared page, by creating some sense of common structure.
3. I do involve students in self-assessment in other classes (for example, see my older posts about Geometry: https://gradingforgrowth.com/p/grading-for-growth-in-geometry-part ). "Ungrading" in this sense is less common in STEM though.
I'm not sure what you mean by student collaboration: between students? The instructor collaborating with the student (when discussing a grade)?
Thank you! I have a sense of how difficult it is to bring faculty together to discuss learning outcomes and grading issues, and I’ve been impressed with the model I’m seeing from a bit of a distance in the ungrading movement. In some ways, I can’t quite wrap my mind around the title “ungrading” because what you describe seems to me to be “explicit grading” and though the final grade is delayed, it is still a final letter grade. How is this final grade consonant with the success-not yet theme? In my mind, keeping the final grade while ungrading in the class doesn’t quite equal not-grading. I ask this because I see the same thing happening in the humanities. Teachers try to evoke persistence and the energy from intrinsic satisfaction and then—boom—there is still the power of the grade, the teacher as both mentor and judge. Is this even an issue in STEM? The disciplinary expectations are so different.
By learners collaborating I’m wondering about peers assessing one another’s work and giving an opinion about whether it is success-not yet, and explain to one another why. Then the self-assessment piece is also in play. The problem is students may not have the expertise to assess one another. The upside is in getting involved in “grading” which success-not yet is a form of, students may over time gain a second sense for where they are in the space between success-and not yet.
Anyway, I’m am fascinated by the co-existence of the grading problem across the curriculum. I read a study from 2023 in a STEM journal that used statistical models to adjust student aptitudes for learning in Humanities courses and in STEM courses. With an N of 3000, the finding that struck me was this; STEM students across the board have a GPA .25 points below Humanities students of the same aptitude. That speaks to a serious problem to me in that the word is out.v Don’t go into STEM if you want a better GPA. That’s why the final grade is salient to me. It involves the voice of the institution and not the teacher of record. In the end it will require CTL along with the Office of Institutional Research to make this a systemic cause, not small bands of malcontents titling at windmills, which I used to feel like when I was the University Assessment Coordinator at CSU Sacramento.
Hi Terry,
I'm not a fan of the term "ungrading" for many reasons, and you've identified some of them! In particular, essentially nobody "doesn't grade" as in "no final grade", so the term actively communicates the wrong idea (I've seen this happen when administrators first hear about "ungrading", it's not fun).
That said, there is a lot of power in de-emphasizing grades on assignments. Removing or reducing those, and/or making them less important (through reassessments) really does have an effect on how students think about a class. Even though there's still a final grade, these changes help them feel less stress about it, and also feel more in control of it.
I have not done a lot with peer assessment. I've never figured out a way for that to make sense in math (although I have occasionally tried). Self-assessment makes a bit more sense to me, as it can help reveal aspects of student learning that I couldn't see otherwise. But still, there is an expert aspect to evaluation that students, by definition, don't have while they are still learning.
I really value this exchange between you and Terry—thank you! I just wanted to add a note on peer assessment (something I’m also not comfortable with). I teach writing and music history and have moved to what I call “peer responding” modeled a bit on Peter Elbow’s Writing Without Teachers. It is interesting to see how they struggle with just reporting their own responses to the writing of their peers rather than “critiquing” and “evaluating” but I think it is invaluable. The students who are responding learn to be more self-aware and realize how a piece of writing impacts us as readers (even boring, technical, or academic writing), and the student author understands that their words trigger responses—some of which they might anticipate, others they never dreamed of.
Rebecca, that's quite interesting - I'm going to have to look into "peer responding" more carefully. It sounds like something that might be valuable for my students too, especially when they are writing proofs and trying to understand what information is important to include or leave out.
Absolutely. And they need that expert eye, what I call the eye from nowhere. That’s what I love about what little I know about ungrading. I’ve seen those online repositories of target bundles, and I think that idea is powerful. Twenty years ago I worked on a statewide portfolio assessment design team at Stanford which had an aspiration to create a “shopping cart” where professors could contribute a “signature assignment” with an assessment categorized in useful ways for rhetorical level and subject matter. It didn’t go very far, but the idea was great. Having taught middle school and then middle school teacher credential candidates, I’ve seen firsthand how grades begin to reduce their own expectations for themselves. I wrote my dissertation on assessment at a middle school. Thanks for this, David. You’re helping me clarify my understanding.