The Grading for Growth Year in Review 2022
Our favorite posts from the past year
We’re starting to wrap up Fall semester here at Grand Valley State University. A lot has happened in the past semester and year. In particular, we submitted our book, Grading for Growth, to our publisher! Watch for it in mid-2023.
This has also been the first full year of our blog’s existence. We’ve covered a lot of ground during that year. So, as we enter our final exam week, we’re taking a look back and picking out our favorite posts from the past year. These aren’t necessarily the most popular posts from this blog (for that, click the “top” tab on our homepage). They’re the posts that we thought were our best, most interesting work, the ones we are just plain proud of.
So, if you’re looking for some reading over the next week, check these out!
Our favorite posts from 2022
Grading for Equity with Grading for Growth (and its followup, part 2) - David dives deep into a common concern about alternative grading: Does it support or hurt equity in our classes?
When is a number not a number? - Robert argues that traditional grading badly misuses statistics in ways that make no sense. (This was our most popular post of 2022 — sometimes our favorite writing is also our most popular writing. We’re not total blog hipsters!)
The heart of the loop: Reattempts without penalty - Robert examines a central idea of alternative grading.
Mythbusters: Ungrading edition - David gets annoyed by weird misrepresentations and deliberate fabrications about ungrading, and blogs about why they’re wrong.
My first experiment with ungrading: Final review - David looks back at ungrading in an upper-level class, and whether it lived up to its promise.
How specifications grading changed my view of academic dishonesty - Robert’s very honest look at how alternative grading has affected his approach to academic dishonesty.
Case studies and guest posts
Our blog has also featured some other types of posts this year. We’ve brought in thoughtful and reflective practitioners of alternative grading and asked them to share their ideas on the blog. We’ve also posted some snippets from our upcoming book, illustrating how faculty across institutions use alternative grading. Here are some of our favorites from each of these categories:
Case study: Dustin Locke’s “Levels System” in a writing-intensive Philosophy class - One of the more unusual, and streamlined, alternative grading systems we’ve seen.
Case Study: Hubert Muchalski’s hybrid assessment system for Organic Chemistry - it has specifications, standards, and even a portfolio!
Guest post: Building meaningful student-instructor relationships, by Katie Mattaini. Katie describes her core values about teaching and learning.
Guest post: Reflections before Re-Entry, by Kate Owens. Ok, this one was from 2021 (but just barely!). In it, Kate describes three important take-aways from her time teaching online.
Thank you again for reading in 2022! We’ll see you in 2023.