I've decided to take my first foray into alternative grading next quarter, with the developmental math class I'm teaching. I've experimented with some alternative grading techniques (retries without penalty being the most significant), but was always nervous about the grading workload, so . . . we'll see how it pans out :) Thanks for sharing your experience, Josh!
I am glad you have found a home in alternative grading. My only complaint thus far is the amount of labor the system offloads on students in terms of keeping track of their progress and calculating their grades. This becomes a particularly pressing issue when you are working with younger students. At my school, we have a LMS that can report out the alternative grades but cannot do the calculations in terms of the overall grade. For that we have to sort of highjack the LMS.
Students just check off boxes as they complete stuff. Really the only work involved is making sure they take the 2 minutes per week required to update it, but that can be an assignment or part of class time.
Thanks, guys!!! I appreciate these checklists. Perhaps, I have overly complicated the computations on my end. That is something for me to think about moving forward. Your systems do look very easy to follow and manage.
The LMS issue is a separate one. At my high school, our students and parents expect real-time reporting out of scores, but in order to go objectives/standards based, we have had to suspend that function and input grades by hand. This lag in grading has caused some discontent... In essence, we are training the parents on the system as we train the students.
It is a slow process. But the profound change in the atmosphere in the classroom makes the struggle worthwhile.
I've decided to take my first foray into alternative grading next quarter, with the developmental math class I'm teaching. I've experimented with some alternative grading techniques (retries without penalty being the most significant), but was always nervous about the grading workload, so . . . we'll see how it pans out :) Thanks for sharing your experience, Josh!
Was just taking another look here and realized that I must have missed the notification for this comment at the end of last year.
Curious to hear your your alternative grading scheme is going, Hannah!
I am glad you have found a home in alternative grading. My only complaint thus far is the amount of labor the system offloads on students in terms of keeping track of their progress and calculating their grades. This becomes a particularly pressing issue when you are working with younger students. At my school, we have a LMS that can report out the alternative grades but cannot do the calculations in terms of the overall grade. For that we have to sort of highjack the LMS.
I didn't share it here, but over the weekend I created a prototype progress tracker to address just this point :) Feel free to check/try it out here! https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mVOgiZbBlO9ycPMVLBX9WjUpCmK_crYTksxb54BAk0U/edit?usp=sharing
Tracking grades is easy and takes very little effort on the part of students. All it takes is a checklist. Josh shared his, here's the one my students use: https://github.com/RobertTalbert/discretecs/blob/master/MTH225-Fall2023/course-docs/MTH%20225%20F23%20Grade%20tracker.pdf
Students just check off boxes as they complete stuff. Really the only work involved is making sure they take the 2 minutes per week required to update it, but that can be an assignment or part of class time.
Thanks, guys!!! I appreciate these checklists. Perhaps, I have overly complicated the computations on my end. That is something for me to think about moving forward. Your systems do look very easy to follow and manage.
The LMS issue is a separate one. At my high school, our students and parents expect real-time reporting out of scores, but in order to go objectives/standards based, we have had to suspend that function and input grades by hand. This lag in grading has caused some discontent... In essence, we are training the parents on the system as we train the students.
It is a slow process. But the profound change in the atmosphere in the classroom makes the struggle worthwhile.
Nice! Thanks!