I really appreciate the open sharing you do about your grading and experimentation. I've incorporated your EMRN scale with my American Sign Languages courses along with other components of specifications grading (including retakes without penalty). It has transformed my relationship with students and grading.
I’m interested to hear how it goes! Perhaps something like this can be used in lower level classes like calculus too. I really like the shift in focus to more wholistic. I’m just wondering about your workload during each week. How much time are you spending giving feedback and meeting with students to discuss their progress? I cannot think of a way to scale this up to 36 students per section.
The feedback part of ungrading is pretty much (so far) the same process as what I've used with specifications grading in the past. Those courses often run in the 25-30 student range, never as big as 36 but not too far off. I actually find it's less work than grading with points. Grading with points requires scrutinizing every fine point of student work and assessing a point value to it, like some kind of Value Added Tax, and agonizing over whether to give students 8/12 points, or 6/12, or 9/12. This takes huge amounts of time; whereas just telling students briefly what's good and what needs improvement does not take nearly as much time. I've found you don't have to give *lots of* feedback, just high-quality and actionable. Sometimes it just takes 1-2 sentences, or if you like, a 30-second video done with Loom.
These classes are unusually small, 19 students in one section and just 9 in the other. That didn't really play a role in my choice, though, and I've seen or read about ungrading setups with hundreds of students. Susan Blum's book goes into that I think.
Asking students what grade they deserve could harm female students, who may sometimes go low in their estimates. I hope that if any students go low, you will move their grade up.
I really appreciate the open sharing you do about your grading and experimentation. I've incorporated your EMRN scale with my American Sign Languages courses along with other components of specifications grading (including retakes without penalty). It has transformed my relationship with students and grading.
Awesome! Would love to learn more.
I'd love to tell you more...here's a glimpse from a recent blog post [I didn't post to share blog, but here it is]: https://kimberlyjhale.com/2022/01/22/new-semester-setup/
I’m interested to hear how it goes! Perhaps something like this can be used in lower level classes like calculus too. I really like the shift in focus to more wholistic. I’m just wondering about your workload during each week. How much time are you spending giving feedback and meeting with students to discuss their progress? I cannot think of a way to scale this up to 36 students per section.
The feedback part of ungrading is pretty much (so far) the same process as what I've used with specifications grading in the past. Those courses often run in the 25-30 student range, never as big as 36 but not too far off. I actually find it's less work than grading with points. Grading with points requires scrutinizing every fine point of student work and assessing a point value to it, like some kind of Value Added Tax, and agonizing over whether to give students 8/12 points, or 6/12, or 9/12. This takes huge amounts of time; whereas just telling students briefly what's good and what needs improvement does not take nearly as much time. I've found you don't have to give *lots of* feedback, just high-quality and actionable. Sometimes it just takes 1-2 sentences, or if you like, a 30-second video done with Loom.
I find this method and plan so fascinating and I am glad you share your thoughts so candidly. May I ask how many students in this course?
These classes are unusually small, 19 students in one section and just 9 in the other. That didn't really play a role in my choice, though, and I've seen or read about ungrading setups with hundreds of students. Susan Blum's book goes into that I think.
Asking students what grade they deserve could harm female students, who may sometimes go low in their estimates. I hope that if any students go low, you will move their grade up.
I addressed that in the article -- see the part where it says "In the case of disagreements about grades, I have this policy this semester:..."
Oops! Sorry I missed that.