Pairs well with alternative grading

Supporting productive struggle by sending a consistent message

Photo by Hailey Tong on Unsplash

So you’ve set up an alternative grading system. It’s going well and you like the results… mostly. But maybe something is nagging at the back of your mind: Alternative grading is all about feedback loops, opportunities for students to try, struggle, learn, and improve. Does the rest of your class align with that too?

The longer I’ve used alternative grading, the more I’ve become convinced that it’s just one part of a balanced diet of educational ideas that center on feedback loops. Helping students see the value of struggle and growth in one part of your class is good – sending that same message across all parts of the class is even better!

Here are some more elements you can bring into your classes that work well with alternative grading. Each of these ideas is based on feedback loops, so they reinforce the goals of alternative grading and send a consistent message about what you value.

Active learning

“Active learning” is a very broad term, encompassing everything from groupwork and worksheets to student presentations to wholly student-driven inquiry-based classes. All active learning aims to directly center students in the learning process, in contrast to traditional lecture.

A necessary part of active learning is struggle, although this isn’t always made explicit. It’s easy for a student to think that they understand an idea when they’re listening to somebody else talk about it. On the other hand, active engagement with new ideas forces students to deal with the inevitable difficulties that surface, sort them out, and work to improve their understanding. Pair this with helpful in-class feedback, and you have a perfect feedback loop.

For example, an instructor might build in low-stakes initial encounters with new ideas (as in flipped learning, which Robert has written much more about) that are then re-encountered, in more advanced forms, during class time. This is a feedback loop that’s built right in to the structure of the class. Inquiry-based classes often involve students inquiring into new ideas, working to solve problems, and then presenting to their peers. All parts of this process help students hone their ability to process and communicate complex ideas, face questions, and fix errors on the fly (I’ve written a lot more about grading presentations too). Large-scale active learning methods like Peer Instruction fundamentally give students a structured and safe opportunity to commit to an answer – possibly wrong! – and then revise their thinking and grow from the experience.

The feedback loops in active learning and alternative grading are the same idea. If you use both of these in the same class, you can make the feedback loop connection explicit. I do this by telling students about the value of struggle in learning, and pointing out how each part of the class promotes this. When both class activities and grading send a consistent message about the value of struggle, students are more likely to get that message, believe it, and use it.

Active learning and alternative grading fit together very well. When you walk the walk as well as talk the talk, students are more likely to buy in to the benefits of feedback loops.

Student teams

Team-based learning can also help students engage with feedback loops. There are dozens of ways, formal and informal, to use teams in a classroom setting. In this context I’m thinking of semi-permanent “base groups” of 3-4 students that are set up for pedagogical purposes within a specific class. These teams could be set up to complete a project, to work together on class activities, to study outside of class, or many other goals. The key is that students work with the same peers regularly for multiple weeks, giving them time to build trust and confidence in each other.

The main benefit of such teams is the relationships that they help build, and the opportunities for support that they promote. As teammates grow more comfortable with each other, they begin to form a small, safe world that can gently encourage struggle and productive failure. Teammates are usually more willing to admit confusion or show mistakes to each other, rather than doing so in front of the instructor or the entire class. This encourages constant informal feedback loops within the teams. Of course, it’s critical to help teams build this trusting relationship, which I believe is best done through group-worthy tasks that show teammates the value of each others’ strengths.

If you make a clear connection to how teams can support each other, then these teams can reinforce the importance of feedback loops in your class. Again, this sends a consistent message about what you value.

There are also grading-specific advantages to using teams. If a student doesn’t understand how some part of my alternative grading system works, I’ve noticed that they are much more willing to ask their teammates for an explanation rather than staying quiet (and confused). I’ve also found that if some students have been in alternatively graded classes before, they will “sell” the benefits of the system to their teammates who are new to the system. This helps build buy-in and trust far beyond what I could do individually.

Goal-setting and reflection

This is maybe the most unusual item in this post. Several years ago, I started asking students in my Euclidean Geometry class to set individual goals for the semester. We use the SMART framework to set practical, achievable, yet nontrivial goals.

This started out as a way to encourage students to stretch and grow beyond the formal content of the course. For students who are already familiar with the content, a personal goal presents a much-needed challenge. For others who are overwhelmed by new and abstract ideas, individual goals give them something more personal and concrete to focus on. For some, a goal provides a challenge to dig into a difficult topic that they might otherwise try to avoid. In every case, I ask students to propose a goal that feels like a “stretch” to them, and to explain why they have room for growth in that direction. This helps ensure that students aren’t choosing things that they are already good at.

There’s the connection to alternative grading: As with everything else in this post, individual goals are a chance for students to engage in feedback loops. Goals push students to try things they might not otherwise do, which necessarily involves taking risks and possibly failing (temporarily!) along the way. And since these goals are happening in an alternatively graded class (in my case, collaboratively graded), students know that early struggles or initial failures with their goals won’t permanently hurt them.

I make it very clear that the actual standard I care about is for students to take consistent steps towards meeting their goal. Periodically, I ask students to reflect on their progress, citing specific examples, and eventually self-assess their growth towards meeting their goal at the end of the semester. This self-assessment contributes to an overall narrative description of how they’ve earned a specific letter grade, including selected evidence from their work during the semester. They aim to meet their goal, but it’s the process of making that stretch, not the final result, that matters. This also helps smooth out the impact of bumps, minor failures, or other difficulties along the way.

I also help: When I see a student working towards their goal, I praise them for that, in person or by email. We have occasional check-in meetings in which I ask students to reflect on the path towards meeting their goals, which includes the chance to adjust or extend the goal if needed. If a student needs a bit of a kick-start, I’ll sometimes create a situation where they can take a meaningful step forward. For example: I use daily student presentations in my Euclidean Geometry class. More than once I’ve had a student whose goal was to face a fear of presenting by volunteering to present more often… but after a week or two, they hadn’t volunteered at all. To help those students, I offer a guaranteed chance to present a problem of their choice (avoiding the usual process of selecting presenters from a group of volunteers), as long as they do it in the next class. Inevitably, they take that offer and do just fine – and as a result, they see how a small goal can be achievable, giving them more willingness to take those small steps in the future.

Goals tend to focus on student presentations (which are a significant part of the class) or mathematical writing (the class comes right after our “intro to proof writing” class, and students are still learning what “proof” really means). Over time, students have found ways to make connections across the curriculum as well: I’ve had pre-service teachers set goals that involved thinking about geometry from their future students’ points of view, practicing skills from education classes such as actively anticipating student questions, and preparing materials they might want to use in their future classrooms.¹

Some students even push in unexpected directions. I’ve had students set goals to not use my flexible due-date policy, challenging themselves to turn in work on time (yes, this was a genuine stretch). Others have asked me to “cold call” them to present their work, facing their fear of being unprepared.

In other words, the consistent message of the importance of feedback loops actually encourages students to set themselves up for struggle and even failure – but in a safe context where they know that I have their back.

Sending a consistent message

It’s important to send a consistent message. If you’re promoting the value of feedback loops in your grading, do students get that same message from other parts of the course? Or might they sense a contradiction? You can reinforce the value of feedback loops through how you structure class time, how students are organized, and through the types of assignments you have.²

---

The Grading Conference!

One more thing: Registration for the 2026 Grading Conference is open! The Grading Conference is an annual online conference all about alternative grading. This year it will be June 16-18, 2026 on Zoom. The conference has pay-what-you-can and institutional registration options too.

---

1. There’s a nice connection to deliberate practice here too, with students setting goals about how they study and prepare for class.

2. This article was inspired by my recently published paper about one of my favorite classes: Euclidean Geometry. I’ve written about this class many times over the years. The paper focused on how multiple innovations come together in this one class, with collaborative grading being just one of them.