In my opening lecture I tell students (grad engineering managers) "nearly everyone gets an A in this class", and "100% of your grade is based on enabling others to learn from you". It's a Systems Thinking class, where a core message is the value of collective learning.
There are two short essays per week, posted to a Moodle forum, then a response to what others have written, and then we discuss all that was posted in a synchronous class session, either in-person or Zoom, though they tend to prefer Zoom.
By and large, this works quite well, but 2/3's of the way through one semester (the COVID year of 2021) ~20 essays had been assigned, 12 of the students were up to date, but four of the students were behind by 2-3 essays each. So I showed this info (without names) in a chart, and said "12 of you have 20 assignments done, and four of you do not... now, you tell me, how many completed assignments are required to get an A in this class?" I posted the question as a survey to be done over the weekend.
No one completed the survey, but the four students who were behind, caught up on unfinished assignments that weekend. By the next class, everyone was caught up.
I am _not_ the arbiter of truth in my classroom. Social norms and collective learning are much more powerful motivators than any assessment I could provide. They will learn more from each other than they ever will from me... but I get to pick the topics of conversation 😊.
My students want to impress their classmates more than me, and in-turn they accomplish more than I ever would have imagined.
You do such amazing work, Patrick! I love the notion that the collaborative atmosphere of your class directly mirrors the working conditions your students will experience (or already are experiencing!) in their engineering roles. Your comment prompts me to consider the differences among graduate students and first-year students...while I can certainly see how the collective responsibility worked so well for your students, I wonder if mine would have felt a "safety in numbers" in learning that so many of them had missing work! :) I realize, too, this may be less connected to the students' levels and MORE connected to this question: are those submitting work late in the majority or the minority? At any rate--fascinating stuff! Appreciate the dialogue.
Oh, that's incredibly frustrating. Thank you for reading and for sharing your experience, too! It's good to know we're not alone in these outcomes, but as you're saying, they're really so hard.
Thanks for this Ashleigh--I suppose that every class is different, and it can be hard to make things work regardless of who is in the class. And, of course, students talk to each other, so sometimes one person who hasn't really signed on can influence others to do the same. When I tried having final grade discussions last semester, one student who hadn't been doing the reading (but had talked a lot in class) staunchly insisted that he should get an A. He said that grades were really important to him, although, he said, the grade was really "up to me"--he seemed to be playing a game, rather than thinking about the goals of learning. I found it very frustrating, though I told him that I didn't really think he deserved an A and that we needed to talk about self-assessment and how to participate in class discussions. He admitted to not having done the reading, but he thought that talking was "all that mattered"--he'd learned this, he said, from another student.
Marianne, you're just exactly right--every class IS different, and so the assessment decisions that work beautifully in one context really can backfire in another. Your story really illustrates how the gamification of grading can work against learning. Thanks for reading!
Yes, I think this is a spectrum, and I don’t at all believe that what I do would work everywhere. I get the cream of the crop of students; they’ve done a lot in their lives to even reach the point that have read my course description.But I begin with the premise that they are naturally inclined to learn, and I don’t think that’s limited to grad students.
Much of what I teach revolves around Systems Thinking, based on Senge’s The Fifth Discipline, being
1) Personal Mastery
2) Mental Models
3) Shared Vision
4) Collective Learning
5) Systems Thinking
With this in mind, should the instructor be the ‘arbiter of truth’? In Personal Mastery, it’s reasonable for the instructor to determine if the student has mastered the topic (e.g., 3rd grade arithmetic). But the value of the instructor’s perception of reality declines as the purpose of learning moves consecutively higher in the hierarchy. A PhD dissertation, by definition, cannot be evaluated for Mastery, because it must be unique. To complete the degree, you must know more than anyone else in your topic, meaning no one else can be judge of your mastery. Eventually, it is up to the student to teach their committee.
So, can we shift the responsibility for ‘truth arbitration’ lower on the spectrum? The 3rd grade math teacher must insist that 2+2=4, but can we lower the grade level at which we expect students to find truth on their own?
As you discuss in your excellent dissertation, grades are extrinsic and transactional, and I posit that we’ve lost emphasis on authentic learning in a means which creates societal value. In fact, a challenge I face is that my grad students are so conditioned to expecting points and grades that I need to wean them off their mental models that feedback in life is continuous and measurable.
IMO - grades have a purpose, but have also become a crutch, for students, instructors, administrators, accreditation agencies, and governments. We all need to reevaluate.
In my opening lecture I tell students (grad engineering managers) "nearly everyone gets an A in this class", and "100% of your grade is based on enabling others to learn from you". It's a Systems Thinking class, where a core message is the value of collective learning.
There are two short essays per week, posted to a Moodle forum, then a response to what others have written, and then we discuss all that was posted in a synchronous class session, either in-person or Zoom, though they tend to prefer Zoom.
By and large, this works quite well, but 2/3's of the way through one semester (the COVID year of 2021) ~20 essays had been assigned, 12 of the students were up to date, but four of the students were behind by 2-3 essays each. So I showed this info (without names) in a chart, and said "12 of you have 20 assignments done, and four of you do not... now, you tell me, how many completed assignments are required to get an A in this class?" I posted the question as a survey to be done over the weekend.
No one completed the survey, but the four students who were behind, caught up on unfinished assignments that weekend. By the next class, everyone was caught up.
I am _not_ the arbiter of truth in my classroom. Social norms and collective learning are much more powerful motivators than any assessment I could provide. They will learn more from each other than they ever will from me... but I get to pick the topics of conversation 😊.
My students want to impress their classmates more than me, and in-turn they accomplish more than I ever would have imagined.
You do such amazing work, Patrick! I love the notion that the collaborative atmosphere of your class directly mirrors the working conditions your students will experience (or already are experiencing!) in their engineering roles. Your comment prompts me to consider the differences among graduate students and first-year students...while I can certainly see how the collective responsibility worked so well for your students, I wonder if mine would have felt a "safety in numbers" in learning that so many of them had missing work! :) I realize, too, this may be less connected to the students' levels and MORE connected to this question: are those submitting work late in the majority or the minority? At any rate--fascinating stuff! Appreciate the dialogue.
I had this same experience with a group of high school in college students and it was really hard and then they all blamed me when they failed.
Oh, that's incredibly frustrating. Thank you for reading and for sharing your experience, too! It's good to know we're not alone in these outcomes, but as you're saying, they're really so hard.
Thanks for this Ashleigh--I suppose that every class is different, and it can be hard to make things work regardless of who is in the class. And, of course, students talk to each other, so sometimes one person who hasn't really signed on can influence others to do the same. When I tried having final grade discussions last semester, one student who hadn't been doing the reading (but had talked a lot in class) staunchly insisted that he should get an A. He said that grades were really important to him, although, he said, the grade was really "up to me"--he seemed to be playing a game, rather than thinking about the goals of learning. I found it very frustrating, though I told him that I didn't really think he deserved an A and that we needed to talk about self-assessment and how to participate in class discussions. He admitted to not having done the reading, but he thought that talking was "all that mattered"--he'd learned this, he said, from another student.
Marianne, you're just exactly right--every class IS different, and so the assessment decisions that work beautifully in one context really can backfire in another. Your story really illustrates how the gamification of grading can work against learning. Thanks for reading!
“Differences between students”
Yes, I think this is a spectrum, and I don’t at all believe that what I do would work everywhere. I get the cream of the crop of students; they’ve done a lot in their lives to even reach the point that have read my course description.But I begin with the premise that they are naturally inclined to learn, and I don’t think that’s limited to grad students.
Much of what I teach revolves around Systems Thinking, based on Senge’s The Fifth Discipline, being
1) Personal Mastery
2) Mental Models
3) Shared Vision
4) Collective Learning
5) Systems Thinking
With this in mind, should the instructor be the ‘arbiter of truth’? In Personal Mastery, it’s reasonable for the instructor to determine if the student has mastered the topic (e.g., 3rd grade arithmetic). But the value of the instructor’s perception of reality declines as the purpose of learning moves consecutively higher in the hierarchy. A PhD dissertation, by definition, cannot be evaluated for Mastery, because it must be unique. To complete the degree, you must know more than anyone else in your topic, meaning no one else can be judge of your mastery. Eventually, it is up to the student to teach their committee.
So, can we shift the responsibility for ‘truth arbitration’ lower on the spectrum? The 3rd grade math teacher must insist that 2+2=4, but can we lower the grade level at which we expect students to find truth on their own?
As you discuss in your excellent dissertation, grades are extrinsic and transactional, and I posit that we’ve lost emphasis on authentic learning in a means which creates societal value. In fact, a challenge I face is that my grad students are so conditioned to expecting points and grades that I need to wean them off their mental models that feedback in life is continuous and measurable.
IMO - grades have a purpose, but have also become a crutch, for students, instructors, administrators, accreditation agencies, and governments. We all need to reevaluate.