Whoops

The most common rookie (and not-so-rookie) mistakes with alternative grading

Photo by Sarah Kilian on Unsplash

There are a few key places where a new alternative grading implementation can succeed or fail. Here are the biggest and most common problems that happen to new – and not-so-new – alternative graders, and how to avoid them.

The reassessment avalanche

Reassessments without penalty are the heart of alternative grading. But reassessments make more grading, so it’s no surprise that the resulting pile of grading can overwhelm new alternative graders.

This is often rooted in good intentions: If we want to see what students really know, why limit that in any way? But reassessment without penalty isn’t the same as reassessment without limit. Offering unlimited reassessments leads to two key problems:

1. Students don’t take time to reflect and study, instead throwing reassessments at the wall to see what sticks. This often looks like students trying again and again while hoping to get a good result, without putting in the effort to create greater learning.

2. Instructors are buried under a giant pile of additional grading.

Problem #1 also leads to a solution: Add “good friction” to reassessments. Good friction is created by things that slow students down and focus them on learning, not just on completing the task. This includes reflection, practice, and generally anything that encourages active engagement in a feedback loop. The result is fewer but higher quality reassessments. Here are some examples of ways to do this:

• Build in reflection: Have students fill out a short reflective cover sheet on a revision that indicates what they learned through the process, what resources they used, etc.

• Have students unlock a reassessment by completing relevant practice problems before being able to attempt a new question. I sometimes use autograded online homework for this purpose.

• Include limits on the frequency of revisions or reassessments, e.g. “once per week”. Be careful with how you implement limits, because not all limits are the same.

• Pre-plan a schedule of reassessments, such as on weekly quizzes, so that you and students know what to expect (this is an approach called standards-based testing).

A related mistake is making a pile of extra work for students by adding reassessments into an already full assessment schedule and not removing anything. This not only creates a reassessment avalanche for instructors, but also overwhelms students with extra work. That’s not a recipe for quality learning. So when adding reassessments, account for the extra time they add to student workload. That means reducing or removing other assessments or otherwise opening up space in your assessment schedule.

The tower of standards

Some forms of alternative grading are based around a list of standards (aka learning targets, objectives, etc.) that cover the key topics you want to assess.

When creating that list, it’s easy to throw in every possible topic that seems important – or interesting – or just includes your pet topics. Robert’s first attempt at alternative grading included an impossible-to-assess 68 standards, and just a few years ago I had 34.

Including a standard means you’re committing to assess it. How did I assess 34 standards? With constant assessments on quizzes, tests, labs, homework… a hectic and unsustainable schedule that focused students on assessments, not on learning.

So if you’re going to use a list of standards, it’s critical to cut that list down to a practical size. A good rule of thumb is to have about 15 standards in a typical 14-15 week course. One new standard per week sets a reasonable pace.

How do you decide what to include in your standards? That’s a difficult and worthwhile task that will make you think really hard about what matters most in your course. The key idea is to write standards at the right level of specificity: More specific than broad and usually un-assessable course-level objectives, but less specific than lesson-level objectives that describe detailed goals for individual days of class. We call the goldilocks zone between these “assessment-level objectives”.

As we describe in our workbook, a good place to start is by identifying high-level modules or units in your class, and then writing down every important objective you can think of that falls under each one. Then begin trimming and merging: For each objective, is it so important that it must be assessed, or is it OK if students just practice with it in class? Is it similar enough to another objective that you could combine them into one? Continue this process until you’ve reached around 15 standards. This is easier said than done, but it’s well worth doing.

For much more detail about how to do this, see How to Write Standards and the workbook (Chapter 11) in our book, Grading for Growth.

The incomprehensibly complex system

Some new (and not-so-new) alternative graders try to create a grading system that perfectly captures student learning. They add bells, whistles, knobs, and levers to address every possible contingency. The resulting system, and its 20-page syllabus, is so complex that nobody – except maybe the instructor – fully understands it.

That’s why our prime directive of alternative grading is KEEP IT SIMPLE. An overly complex grading system doesn’t serve students nor instructors. It can focus students on “playing the game” rather than learning. A simple and flexible system gives students room to focus on learning, and lets instructors respond to what students need.

Here are two common signs that your grading system is too complex:

• You have lots of special cases or exceptions in your policies. For example, if you use tokens, allowing students to use a token to extend a deadline by 24 hours except only once per week and no more than once per assignment, or they can spend two tokens at a time to extend by 48 hours but only once per semester and they must be spent simultaneously.

• Final grade requirements that depend on 5, 6, 7, or more factors. I usually advise having just 2 or 3 main categories that contribute to final grades (for example, “number of standards met” and “number of homework assignments at Successful”). Less critical items can be purely formative or lumped into an “engagement” category.

It’s also possible for a system to be too simple, but honestly I never see that from new alternative graders. If you think you’re in that situation, look at a previous semester and try to estimate how a variety of students might have done under your system. Does that bring up any unexpected issues? That could be a hint that additional complexity might be needed.

You can always iterate on a grading system in future semesters, adding complexity where it’s needed and removing it where it isn’t. When in doubt, choose a simple approach and build in flexibility to handle unexpected situations.

The one-and-done explanation

Imagine this: Your students have never seen alternative grading before. You’ve designed a perfect, beautiful, learning-focused system and need to tell them all about it. So you spend the first day of class lecturing students about all of the details of your alternative grading system, showing them colorful tables from the syllabus, filling their brains with details. Now they fully understand it and you never need to talk about it again, right?

That’s the mistake: Like anything else that’s worth learning, an alternative grading system takes time and practice to understand. It’s important to treat it that way. A one-and-done grading system explanation is just as effective as a one-and-done lecture on any other complex topic – not very.

Just like any other new topic, there are many ways to help students effectively learn about a new grading system. Put on your teacher hat! Here are some ways I do this:

First, I spread out the explanation over time. It’s not a bad idea to spend some time explaining your grading system in the first week of class, especially your reasons for using it, the benefits for students, and generally working to establish trust and buy-in. But that shouldn’t be the end of the story. Provide reminders and look out for opportunities to elicit questions and feedback on your system when students are most primed to think about it. Good examples of those times are: just before the first assessment, just after they receive marks and feedback from that assessment, around midterms, just before the end of the semester, and so on.

Second, actively engage students with the learning process. As just one example, I provide made-up examples of student progress and ask students to determine which grade those students earned. The resulting questions and discussions are quite productive. You can do something similar by asking students to decide if sample work successfully meets a standard or specifications.

A pro tip: Nowadays I spend very little time talking about grades on the first day of class. Instead, I use that time to get students actively involved with class material, demonstrating what we’ll actually be doing on a typical day. To help them understand grades, I provide a very short (less than 5 minute) video to review before class. Then I follow my advice above, adding details about grades and chances for questions before and after the first assignment, when it’s more relevant. To help soothe student anxiety, I promise on the first day of class that we’ll talk about grades before the first assignment, because that’s when it will make more sense.

Overthinking… and underthinking

While I was writing this post, I asked the alternative grading community on BlueSky for their input. Two common themes emerged: overthinking and underthinking.

These aren’t as contrary as they might sound. First, overthinking: Some who are interested in using alternative grading want to wait for the perfect system or the perfect moment. That can be because they perceive risks to their career, fear systemic barriers, worry that an imperfect approach will fail, or many other reasons.

I’m not discounting these, but I do want to remind you that you can start small. There are simple and flexible systems ready for you to use – even some that fit into existing traditionally graded classes – and lots of resources and sample syllabi available. A common response once an instructor tries alternative grading is: “I’ll never go back”.

Underthinking your use of alternative grading – jumping straight into it without first examining your motivation, philosophy, and context – is a real issue as well. I’m not saying that you need a 20-page written philosophy statement before your first use of alternative grading. But it’s important to have thought about questions like: Why do you want to use alternative grading? What speaks to you about it? What is special about your class, your students, your school that might inform your approach?

Finding a system that aligns with your values and your context is critical: If you don’t believe in it, who else will? In particular, trying alternative grading because you’ve heard it’s a good idea but not really committing to it is a recipe for failure.

So, aim to split the difference: Spend some time researching and reflecting and understanding what you and your students need. But when you find something that looks like it will work for you, go for it!

Productive struggle is for instructors too

I often talk with my students about productive struggle – the process of struggling with a new idea and learning from that struggle. It’s a natural part of learning, and that’s true for instructors as well as students. Using alternative grading effectively is a skill, and like any other skill, the first step to doing it well might just be doing it poorly.

The “rookie mistakes” in this post aren’t something to fear, but something to consider as you make plans. Once a class is running, one of the best things you can do is talk with students both individually and anonymously. Chatting with students in office hours or putting a quick anonymous form in a prep activity are great ways to see if students have concerns. If they do, don’t be afraid to make a mid-course adjustment. Keep your students’ learning in focus, respond flexibly, and engage in your own personal feedback loop as an instructor.

Thanks to the folks on BlueSky for generating lots of ideas and discussion!

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