Why I don't grade presentations (and what I do instead)
Removing grades can have unexpected results
I recently attended the delightfully named Mathfest and gave a talk with this title in the Inquiry-Based Learning paper session. That presentation brought up a lot of great discussion, which inspired me to expand it and share it here with you!
One of my very favorite classes to teach is Euclidean Geometry. I’ve written about it quite often on this blog, especially how I’ve removed grades and give only feedback.
Today I want to look at a different part of the class: student presentations. Before class, students attempt genuine geometric problems, and then volunteer to present their work in class. The core of class time is students giving these presentations and answering questions from classmates. As necessary, I summarize or orchestrate discussions about those presentations, which sometimes involves students working in teams to try to patch up problems with a solution, which in turn may lead to additional presentations.
Frequent student presentations are a common feature of classes like mine that use Inquiry-Based Learning (IBL)1, as well as flipped learning and other active pedagogies. In this post, I’m mainly focusing on class structures like these with frequent student presentations, rather than one-off presentations such as end-of-semester reports.
Before I dig into why I don’t grade student presentations, I want to take a moment to think about the benefits of these presentations. There are lots of different reasons to organize a class around student presentations, and here are some of mine:
To inquire into student thinking. It’s right there in the name of the class structure – Inquiry-Based Learning. One of the four pillars of IBL is “Instructors inquire into student thinking” — and yes, we all have pillars! If I want to understand what a student thinks, what better way than to ask them to share that thinking out loud?
To change the power structure in the class. When students are presenting front and center, I’m necessarily off to the side, listening and learning about their thinking. The shift in dynamic is noticeable, and gives students an opportunity to take learning literally into their own hands. It’s quite different for a student to ask a question or suggest a correction to another student, rather than asking me.
To give students a chance to practice a relevant skill and build confidence in a safe and supportive environment. My students are mostly future teachers, so they know that being able to talk about mathematical ideas in a clear and coherent way is an important skill. An big part of this is encouraging students to learn through productive failure and practicing failing gracefully.
Notice that grades aren’t anywhere on that list. Grades are unrelated to my purposes for using student presentations.
Why I don’t grade presentations
How do you grade student presentations? This is a big topic of discussion in the IBL community. About 7 years ago, when I first converted my Euclidean Geometry class to an IBL structure, I graded presentations using points. That’s because, well, they were an important part of class, so I didn’t think twice about grading them.
At first, I used a pair of 4-point rubrics: one focused on content and mathematical correctness, the other on presentation style. I almost immediately realized that they were terrible at capturing all of the different things students might do in a presentation. Worse, it was nearly impossible to disentangle a mathematical issue from how it was presented, and it felt wrong to penalize a student twice for one issue. Basically, they weren’t good rubrics and didn’t do what I wanted, which is also why I’m not sharing them here.
I soon moved to a single 5-level rubric similar to the first one in this post (which also has a lot of great ideas about presentation rubrics), and later to the second one at the bottom of that post. They still had the same underlying problem that most presentations only vaguely fit into one of the rubric’s categories. Plus, the rubrics all used points, which led to the classic partial credit problem of “could you make that a 3 instead of a 2?”
Within a few semesters, I had moved my class to a specifications grading system. Because of the frustrations of the rubrics I’d previously used, I decided to “grade” presentations for completion only: I simply recorded the number of times a student presented, checking only that it was done with reasonable effort. I didn’t grade correctness and style at all. This was better in many ways, but it led to its own set of problems. I now had to specify the number of presentations required for each grade, e.g. “Complete 6 presentations for an A”. Rather than being worried about how many points they earned, students were worried about how many presentations they had completed, what counted as a presentation, and so on. Some students gave up if it seemed like there was no way for them to present often enough to earn a higher grade. Class size and the unpredictable speed with which we moved through presentations made it hard for me to make a good estimate of how many presentations would be possible per student, which led to even more funny business. Sometimes I had to change the grade requirements mid-semester (“Oops, only 5 presentations needed for an A!”). Other times I would frantically devise additional opportunities to present, which often ended up being good pedagogical moves, but for all the wrong reasons.
Most importantly, I realized that presentation grades – in every form – were working directly against my reasons for using presentations in the first place. The fact that a presentation was graded was always tugging at a student’s brain, distracting them from my real goals and leading to counterproductive incentives. The anxiety that students felt at “having to be right” meant that they played it safe and volunteered only when they were really confident, giving me fewer chances to gain insight into their thinking. Presentation grades put me right back in the center of the power structure: while the student was up front presenting, there I was at the side, judging them, and they knew it. All of this made the class feel less safe and supportive, meaning that students were less willing to practice these valuable skills, and giving them fewer chances to grow through productive failure.
What I do instead
In Fall of 2021, I decided to jump feet first into “ungrading”, by which I mean: I removed all grades from all assignments in the class. “Ungrading” isn’t really the point of this post, but the details of how I implemented it are available elsewhere (at the midterm and final, and then again a few semesters later).
As part of removing all grades, I stopped grading presentations entirely, including for completion. Instead, I give feedback, often one-on-one after class or by email.
One issue I quickly recognized was that students felt unmoored without grades to provide structure and incentives, and they needed more guidance on how they were doing and what they needed to do next.
To help add back some of that structure, I created an individualized goal-setting process that I call a “direction for growth”. While a student’s goals can be focused on presenting or writing, I encourage them to choose an option that feels like more of a stretch, and the vast majority choose presenting. I help students set a specific and actionable long-term goal for the semester, and periodically they set short-term goals that help them make progress towards that larger goal. I keep these goals on a class roster, where I also take notes about each presentation.
The individualized goals have been a fantastic replacement for presentation grades. They help me make tailored and relevant feedback, and students are more responsive since I’m directly responding to their expressed needs. These goals also lend a productive structure to the periodic one-on-one “check-in” meetings that I have with each student.
The atmosphere in this gradeless class is much better aligned with my goals for using presentations. Without grades on presentations, students are more willing to take risks and share their ideas, which in turn helps me inquire into their thinking. Many students even put risk-taking into their goals, for example by setting a goal of “volunteering to present when I’m not confident in my work”. Other students have asked me to “cold call” them for presentations, and similar goals lead to students facing their fears of being unprepared. The feedback I give has led to practical advice about how to handle uncertainty, anxiety, and surprises. Those are things that never happened when I graded presentations.
Students have also started to do surprising and creative things with their presentations. Early in the semester, presentations often involve constructions, in which students describe how to use a compass and straightedge to physically create geometric objects. More than once, a presenter has asked for a volunteer to come up and use a compass and straightedge to enact their construction at the whiteboard, while the presenter verbally describes the steps of their construction. Their goal was to reveal any ambiguity in the verbal instructions when the volunteer drew something unintended. In other words, the students were deliberately setting themselves up to fail, learn from it, and improve on the fly!
More than once, when it was clear that nobody had fully figured out a difficult problem, a student volunteered to “workshop” a presentation: They presented an idea for where to begin and perhaps a general approach, and then asked classmates to give suggestions on how to move forward until finally creating a fully correct solution. These students were orchestrating productive mathematical discussions, practicing a key skill for future teachers, all while explicitly acknowledging to their classmates that they didn’t have full understanding. This only became possible once I removed the grade pressure to have one fully correct presentation ready to go.
Finally, removing presentation grades has solved a stubborn problem: what to do about “process presentations”? After we complete all presentations for the day, we often have class time left to work in teams on solving new problems. Sometimes a student has a key insight that I think is important for everyone to hear, and so I might say “Could you share that with everyone?” By its very nature, this isn’t a full solution – usually just a short idea – and so it was always unclear whether this sort of “process presentation” should count as a presentation, whether it should be graded using a rubric, and so on. By eliminating presentation grades, that problem takes care of itself. Students see a process presentation for what it is: A collaborator sharing a helpful idea with colleagues, in a safe and supportive environment.
In general, grade anxiety about presentations has decreased remarkably. Students see presentations as a valuable tool to build their understanding and practice relevant skills, rather than as a hoop to jump through in order to earn a grade.
But wait…
There’s probably a question in your head right now: If I don’t grade student presentations, what motivates them to present at all? Why should a student volunteer to present if there’s no grade attached?
Before I answer this question, I want to be clear: I’m not here to tell you that you must do exactly what I’ve done in this one class. (I haven’t even gone completely gradeless in my other classes!) But I do want to communicate an essential idea that’s been growing in my brain ever since I first started using alternative grading.
Grades are often used as both a carrot and a stick. They are incentives to act in a certain way, and punishment for not doing so. When you think of grades in this way, suddenly everything becomes a grade, and the instructor’s job becomes setting up just the right collection of carrots and sticks to make students act just the “right” way.
But that doesn’t have to be the case. We don’t have to use grades to force students to behave in certain ways.
Humans are social animals. We are wired to care about others and to take part in communities where we see ourselves as members. If students feel like they are part of a safe and supportive community, then they are more willing to share their ideas. They actively want to be a valued member of that community, to feel that sense of belonging, and so they naturally do what the community values.
That’s why a huge amount of my time in Euclidean Geometry is spent trying to establish exactly that kind of community. I do this in dozens of ways, big and small. This is something I’ve practiced for years and still mess up on occasion. Some examples of how I try to build such a community include:
I say so, out loud and repeatedly: “I want this class to be a safe and supportive community.” Then I usually go on to explain how a particular part of class (such as removing grades) is part of my attempt to build that community.
I collaboratively generate a list of class norms with students (and regularly remind them of those norms).
I set a tone of respect and collegiality in the classroom, through my words and actions. This includes training students on how to ask good questions, applauding speakers, and many other community-building details.
I remove grades, and explain to students that I’m doing that exactly so that we can focus on learning rather than on the weird incentives that grades provide.
I practice giving helpful, tailored feedback.
In general, I seek to build trust, both with me and between students, which helps create a community and make students feel safe within it.
Most difficult of all, I’ve had to learn how to sit on my hands, keep my mouth shut, and stop putting up barriers that unnecessarily stop students from doing what they naturally want to do – learn and share.
Off-topic: This Euclidean Geometry class, like most inquiry-based classes, is based around a “problem sequence”. This is a carefully ordered list of definitions, axioms, constructions, theorems, etc., that students work through. It’s organized to slowly guide students to discover key ideas. The problem sequence I use is written by David M. Clark. I am not David M. Clark. I can guarantee a whole-class laugh at some point every semester when a student discovers that I am not the author of their textbook. The other David Clark is well-known in the math IBL community, so at Mathfest, I was introduced as “the other David Clark” which aligned well with this slide from my talk:
10 bonus internet points to anyone who can identify the last one (without reverse image searching)!
Dave Clark Five?
Thank you very much for sharing what you do! I don’t tend to have as many student presentations during the semester, but I wonder if even having that opportunity to have students contribute to expectations for presenters and audience beforehand might be helpful for me (create some sense of ownership for the students).