What We’re Talking about When We Talk about Nontraditional Grading
SUNY Oswego-Plattsburgh Zoom Book Club Conversations about Nontraditional Grading
Today we bring you a guest post by the facilitators of a recent cross-college book club focused on alternative grading.
The SUNY Oswego Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT) + SUNY Plattsburgh Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE) cross-college co-facilitated Zoom book club recently read the Grading for Growth book and it sparked some of the most interesting discussions our group has ever had. In this post, we summarize and explore some of the questions, concerns, and ideas about alternative grading that the book generated. Our goal is to give the readers of this blog an on-the-ground report about alternative grading conversations in higher ed from the perspective of faculty and staff at two small regional state universities, highlighting what we found most surprising or notable. We conclude with some suggestions for other educational developers who are interested in facilitating pedagogical reflection and learning about alternative grading practices.
Seeking Better Ways to Assess Learning
Faculty across both of our campuses shared frustration and burnout with traditional grading systems. When and how they’d arrived at this point varied. For some, it happened in the first few weeks of a course as they witnessed students slip away following the first major assessment and the disappointing grades that followed. For others, it happened at the end of the term when grades failed to reflect the growth and learning that students achieved. A few had harbored dissatisfaction with traditional grading from their own education, and the ways grades failed to motivate them and encourage actual learning. Many faculty were simply exhausted from being in “grading jail” and wanted to make assessments more meaningful and even joyful.
When we asked participants in our first meeting what feelings they had about grading, most everyone exclaimed that they dreaded grading, that it was frustrating and often felt meaningless. There was strong consensus among our participants that traditional grading systems incentivized students to focus on maximizing their grade rather than their learning. Virtually all of us felt that our efforts in providing feedback were moot because we knew that students were fixated on their grade and not the growth we wanted to inspire. One thing was certain: faculty wanted more from their grading practices. They were eager for a change. In particular, they sought a system that would promote equity, foster student growth, and inspire authentic learning—all while developing career-ready skills expected by employers and providing a more balanced and sensible workload for themselves.
Throughout our meetings (we offered three different day/time options for a biweekly Zoom meeting, for five weeks) we repeatedly returned to a need for more equitable and inclusive grading, and how alternative grading systems might help us accomplish this. We worried about how traditional grading may exacerbate inequalities between students with varying backgrounds. We also wanted our assessments to actually measure student learning. Many of us echoed the concern that traditional grading was often missing the mark on assessing real learning and the actual knowledge students were gaining. We spent an enormous amount of time differentiating our rubrics so that the difference between an 86 and an 88 was so clear, yet somewhere along the way we forgot what we even wanted from our students in the first place.
What we as the group’s facilitators found most surprising was how readily participants questioned the oft-cited justification for traditional grading, i.e. “We've always done it this way.” Indeed, they welcomed the opportunity to seriously reflect on the purpose of grading in their courses, and in our discussions, faculty seemed ready to truly reckon with the conflicts and unease they had experienced while using traditional grading. They were a self-selected group, but we know from our other book discussions that faculty who voluntarily join our programs are not shy about voicing skepticism and critiques! So, it was noteworthy that they were virtually unanimous in their willingness to seriously consider nontraditional grading. At a time when faculty fatigue looms over educational development, nontraditional grading still sparked energetic conversation and reflection about innovative teaching practices.
Debating Different Alternative Grading Systems
There was unanimous agreement about the value of Grading for Growth’s four pillars of alternative grading for providing meaningful feedback. There was also general agreement that many alternative grading practices could give students the opportunity to gather evidence of their achievements and make them active participants in assessing their learning, a skillset that would continue to serve them well throughout their careers while giving faculty some space to reduce their own grading workloads.
But there was much more variety in faculty preferences for specific alternative grading approaches. Overall, faculty seemed to be most interested in alternatives that have been demonstrated to be effective in their own (or a closely related) discipline. Faculty in the humanities, arts, and social sciences seemed more open to consider labor-based, contract, or ungrading systems, while faculty in STEM fields generally exhibited a preference for standards-based grading or specifications grading.
A substantial portion of the book club discussions focused on standards-based grading. One concern raised by faculty was that some of the approaches described in the text at times appeared to be excessively complex, requiring students to demonstrate mastery of each standard multiple times over the semester. We debated at some length to what extent such an approach adds complexity for students in terms of understanding the course requirements. At the other extreme, participants noted that requiring students to demonstrate mastery of each standard only once would result in the loss of spaced retrieval practice, an essential step in building long-term recall and transfer ability.
What we found most notable about these debates and discussions about specific nontraditional grading systems was that instructors who were more apprehensive about the risk of switching entirely to an alternative grading system were generally open to adopting a partial conversion approach in which some form of alternative grading was adopted for one or more categories of assignments. This more gradual approach can provide a less risky transition path toward a more complete adoption of an alternative grading strategy for faculty who are more risk averse. Importantly, using some aspects of nontraditional grading alongside traditional grading offers an option that might be readily adapted to different teaching contexts as shaped by the instructor’s positionality, intersectional identities, and employment status.
Adopting Nontraditional Grading is Not Easy
One of the biggest takeaways from our discussions was that implementing nontraditional grading takes significant planning, time, effort, and attention. The learning curve for instructors and for students is steep. In any class using nontraditional grading, fully grasping the grading system becomes almost an additional learning outcome for students, requiring careful and repeated communications and understanding checks on the part of the instructor.
Even as the reading sparked new ideas for how they might implement nontraditional grading, for some faculty the book also raised new and more nuanced questions and concerns than they had at the beginning. Some felt that nontraditional grading systems may not work very well for general education classes in which students are not intrinsically motivated by the subject matter, and may not scale well for their largest classes. Other faculty noted that one-on-one meetings between each student and the instructor would not be feasible for them, given their course loads. Anecdotally, we heard from instructors, and found in our own classes, that using nontraditional grading seemed to be more difficult with new students and in introductory classes than in more advanced classes with more experienced students. In addition, we discussed ways that nontraditional grading might be anxiety provoking for students who use their grades as a signal of their successful mastery of the subject matter, an especially crucial point for equity-minded educators working with neurodivergent, first-generation, and other historically underrepresented student population.
Over the course of our meetings, it became abundantly clear that alternative grading is not for the faint of heart. It requires time and energy for the nuts-and-bolts details of class planning, and also a level of sheer bravery and trust in students to radically reframe established teaching practices, including a willingness (enabled by employment security, for one) to make mistakes, pivots, and revisions in teaching. It means cultivating a resiliency much like the resiliency we want our students to learn and embrace in order to make major changes to pedagogical practices.
The (Sort Of) Surprising Scope of Our Conversations
Grading for Growth inspired deep reflection about some of the most entrenched practices at colleges and universities and our own individual complicity or participation in practices that contribute to inequity and injustice in higher education. Yet simultaneously, sometimes during the same discussion, talking about nontraditional grading led to brainstorming specific course and assignment designs, inspired by the detailed how-tos, examples, and case studies in the book. We even delved into the nitty gritty of ways to circumvent the limitations of our LMS gradebook!
As educational developers, it was unique in our experience to facilitate conversations that so seamlessly encompassed both granular discussions about classroom practices as well as reflections voiced by instructors who were seriously considering making a major pedagogical paradigm shift. We were struck by the wide scope of our conversations, but upon reflection, it makes a great deal of sense. Traditional grading systems wield such tremendous power in educational institutions that in-depth discussions about using nontraditional grades will almost certainly spur reflection on deeply entrenched systems and practices, even as people simultaneously discuss specific nontraditional grading how-tos.
Suggestions for Other Educational Developers
The book club conversations we had convinced us that nontraditional grading is a topic of significant interest to a diverse group of instructors, and would be well worth considering by educational developers crafting programs at teaching and learning centers. A few words of advice, based on our experience:
A good first step in facilitating pedagogical learning and reflection about nontraditional grading could be as simple as adding an online resource page to your center’s website. Here are examples from Boston University, Harvard University, Northern Illinois University, and University of California Berkeley.
Our experience suggests that we should prioritize encouraging and supporting faculty who are interested in utilizing some nontraditional grading but not necessarily switching entirely to a nontraditional grading system. It would be helpful to have ready some concrete examples of how to do this, and to keep in mind James M. Lang’s call for making small teaching changes that can have a significant impact on student learning.
Discussions about grading and nontraditional grading can get intense and personal. Make sure there is time, trust, and space for those conversations, and ensure everyone understands your center’s ethical guidelines and confidentiality policies. At the same time, discussions about nontraditional grading can frequently generate brainstorming about the nitty-gritty of course planning, using the LMS, and designing assignments. Preparing with practical resources such as information about your LMS gradebook would be a good way to boost the efficacy of these discussions.
We are huge advocates for cross-campus programs. Using Zoom for our book club enables us to have meaningful interdisciplinary conversations with colleagues on another SUNY campus while simultaneously expanding our opportunity to work with our faculty developer counterparts.
About the Authors
Jessamyn Neuhaus is a professor of education and Director of the Syracuse University Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence. She has over twenty years of college teaching experience, including as a professor of history at SUNY Plattsburgh, where she served as CTE Director. Neuhaus is the author of Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to be Effective Teachers and editor of Picture a Professor: Interrupting Biases about Faculty and Increasing Student Learning, both published in the West Virginia University Press series, Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. Her forthcoming book, Snafu Edu: Teaching and Learning When Things Go Wrong in the College Classroom will be published in the Oklahoma University Press series, Teaching, Engaging, and Thriving in Higher Education. In addition to two historical monographs, she has published pedagogical, historical and cultural studies research in numerous anthologies and journals, and is editor of Teaching History: A Journal of Methods. Visit her website: https://jessamynneuhaus.com/.
Maggie Schmuhl is an associate professor of criminal justice and serves as the associate director of the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at SUNY-Oswego. Maggie’s research examines critical perspectives on violence and state response to violence; her work is published in outlets such as Social Problems, Criminal Justice Policy Review, and Violence Against Women. Maggie received the 2024 SUNY Oswego President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching recognizing her commitment to inclusive and evidence-based pedagogy.
John Kane is a professor of economics with over forty years of college teaching experience, and Director of the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at SUNY-Oswego. He is a recipient of the 2020 John Ward and Michael Piette Research award for his contributions to the field of forensic economics and is the author of numerous articles on the economics of education, economic education, and labor economics. Since November 2017 he has been the co-host and audio editor of the Tea for Teaching podcast, a weekly podcast on teaching and learning.
The views and opinions expressed by guest authors are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of David Clark, Robert Talbert, or this publication.
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