Really appreciate this series! I have been gradually ungrading in my own teaching, and I hear what you're saying about final grades. A couple of somewhat disconnected thoughts:
In a sense, I think that what we are feeling in relation to final grades is what happens *whenever* we start assigning grades to student work, whenever that happens in a course. (When I was using more conventional grading practices, it tended to happen after the first graded essay.)
That being said, I do feel like final grading conferences can have the effect of re-centering grades. It's one of those things that are hard to avoid, but important to recognize.
One thing that I have found helpful for myself in relation to some of the issues you're discussing here is breaking away from the idea of the 100% scale. Even if we're not literally doing percentile grading, we may still be operating on the standard of an A meaning that you earned full credit or nearly full credit for the course: in other words, your performance was perfect or nearly perfect. In effect, this means that there is a single standard of excellence (though of course individual students might be expected to manifest that standard in different ways). Instead, I've been trying to think in terms of multiple paths to excellence.
The way that this works in practice is kind of like the Spinal Tap amp: everything goes up to 11, that is, to more than 100%. On the face of it, this may seem about as dumb as Nigel Tufnel, and yet it has some interesting consequences, both practically and conceptually. It builds in the recognition that students can genuinely exceed my expectations, that they can excel while still being imperfect, and that they can excel in different ways. It builds in space for students to make meaningful decisions about how they structure their work: in effect, they can shift the emphasis of their efforts and my evaluation without losing credit. And when it comes to giving final grades, it builds in a structural generosity that helps to partially mitigate structural inequities. (As a side benefit, my sense is that it also tends to reduce students' anxiety about the ungrading process, such as sometimes arise from the fact that I don't really "talk grades" over the course of the term.)
Thanks for this! I do like the idea of multiple paths to excellence. I think that's part of what I liked about the "quantity, quality, growth" framework. Students can do excellent work through a combination of these things, and the balance will look a little different for every student. And even if they came up short on one particular metric, they can still excel in the class if they've done well on the other two. But you're so right: it's very hard to move out of the mindset that an "A" is 100% perfect work.
Really appreciate this series! I have been gradually ungrading in my own teaching, and I hear what you're saying about final grades. A couple of somewhat disconnected thoughts:
In a sense, I think that what we are feeling in relation to final grades is what happens *whenever* we start assigning grades to student work, whenever that happens in a course. (When I was using more conventional grading practices, it tended to happen after the first graded essay.)
That being said, I do feel like final grading conferences can have the effect of re-centering grades. It's one of those things that are hard to avoid, but important to recognize.
One thing that I have found helpful for myself in relation to some of the issues you're discussing here is breaking away from the idea of the 100% scale. Even if we're not literally doing percentile grading, we may still be operating on the standard of an A meaning that you earned full credit or nearly full credit for the course: in other words, your performance was perfect or nearly perfect. In effect, this means that there is a single standard of excellence (though of course individual students might be expected to manifest that standard in different ways). Instead, I've been trying to think in terms of multiple paths to excellence.
The way that this works in practice is kind of like the Spinal Tap amp: everything goes up to 11, that is, to more than 100%. On the face of it, this may seem about as dumb as Nigel Tufnel, and yet it has some interesting consequences, both practically and conceptually. It builds in the recognition that students can genuinely exceed my expectations, that they can excel while still being imperfect, and that they can excel in different ways. It builds in space for students to make meaningful decisions about how they structure their work: in effect, they can shift the emphasis of their efforts and my evaluation without losing credit. And when it comes to giving final grades, it builds in a structural generosity that helps to partially mitigate structural inequities. (As a side benefit, my sense is that it also tends to reduce students' anxiety about the ungrading process, such as sometimes arise from the fact that I don't really "talk grades" over the course of the term.)
Thanks for this! I do like the idea of multiple paths to excellence. I think that's part of what I liked about the "quantity, quality, growth" framework. Students can do excellent work through a combination of these things, and the balance will look a little different for every student. And even if they came up short on one particular metric, they can still excel in the class if they've done well on the other two. But you're so right: it's very hard to move out of the mindset that an "A" is 100% perfect work.