Hi, nice article. It raised an interesting question that I don't... how students are equipped to judge quality? I suppose one can make rubrics, but my sense as an outsider (I teach math) is that there is some sort of expertise required to judge quality. I recall as a student I would do my best in essays in English class but would end up dissapointingly with a B, but despite reading the feedback I would have no idea how to get an A or what made it a B. Probably if I saw a classmates work who got an A, I would realize how much better their's was.
Asao Inoue talks a lot about working with students on published writing to get them to think about what makes good writing. I haven’t taught writing using ungrading, but it does feel like one could get a sense of standards from that.
Thanks for your comments! I'm a fan of Inoue's work. I do think providing models is important. Every major assignment I gave students I also completed myself, and I shared my work with them as a sample. While I think this was effective, I still found that students generally weren't very well-equipped to evaluate their work, and I don't think I did a great job helping them develop those skills. In reflecting on the class afterward (spoiler alert), I found that I had relied too heavily on self-assessment. More to come in later posts!
Thanks for this great article. I appreciate the mix of practical advice (e.g., midterm grade reporting deadlines) and more direct feedback about the student experience.
It's interesting to me the way that most of your students focused on the external markers of their work in the class instead of looking more deeply at the quality of their work. I agree with other comments that suspect that this is tied to the way that students are trained to think about their grades as a game of sorts.
I wonder what it would look like to get them to be more introspective and whether reframing the conversation from "what grade would you give yourself" to a question that gets more to the root of what you are looking for. How did you frame the purpose of the mid-semester conferences? I'm sure for many students this is likely a totally new experience and they practiced on how to think about assessing the quality of their work.
Thanks again for sharing your experience, super helpful for me as I consider prototyping some alternative grading in one of my courses this fall.
Thanks for this! The purpose of the midsemester conference is really two-fold: 1) for both myself and the students to reflect intentionally on their progress toward the course goals and 2) to get us on the same page about assessments of their work, including grade designations. I want them to practice assigning themselves a grade based on evidence of their submitted work, since that's what they'll have to do at the end of the semester. And I don't want there to be any surprises when we get there. But I do think the activity of assigning may grade get in the way of robust reflection on learning, since grades are tied up in so many things that *aren't* about learning. And it is a kind of foreign activity for students.
I too wonder about students’ ability to assess their own work, with the majority coming from traditional high schools that are invested in grades and standardized tests and formal, rote learning.
Colleges generally don’t seem to have space to support doing away with grades. Where more and more colleges have intense surveillance for “support” (and, frankly, retaining those who pay the bills!), they aren’t equipped for ungrading, narrative evaluations, or anything besides our standard grades (and grade inflations!).
Yes, self-assessment is definitely a skill that students have to build, and not one they're very used to. You're absolutely right that education isn't structured for it. You have to do a lot of work-arounds.
Hi, nice article. It raised an interesting question that I don't... how students are equipped to judge quality? I suppose one can make rubrics, but my sense as an outsider (I teach math) is that there is some sort of expertise required to judge quality. I recall as a student I would do my best in essays in English class but would end up dissapointingly with a B, but despite reading the feedback I would have no idea how to get an A or what made it a B. Probably if I saw a classmates work who got an A, I would realize how much better their's was.
Asao Inoue talks a lot about working with students on published writing to get them to think about what makes good writing. I haven’t taught writing using ungrading, but it does feel like one could get a sense of standards from that.
Thanks for your comments! I'm a fan of Inoue's work. I do think providing models is important. Every major assignment I gave students I also completed myself, and I shared my work with them as a sample. While I think this was effective, I still found that students generally weren't very well-equipped to evaluate their work, and I don't think I did a great job helping them develop those skills. In reflecting on the class afterward (spoiler alert), I found that I had relied too heavily on self-assessment. More to come in later posts!
Thanks for this great article. I appreciate the mix of practical advice (e.g., midterm grade reporting deadlines) and more direct feedback about the student experience.
It's interesting to me the way that most of your students focused on the external markers of their work in the class instead of looking more deeply at the quality of their work. I agree with other comments that suspect that this is tied to the way that students are trained to think about their grades as a game of sorts.
I wonder what it would look like to get them to be more introspective and whether reframing the conversation from "what grade would you give yourself" to a question that gets more to the root of what you are looking for. How did you frame the purpose of the mid-semester conferences? I'm sure for many students this is likely a totally new experience and they practiced on how to think about assessing the quality of their work.
Thanks again for sharing your experience, super helpful for me as I consider prototyping some alternative grading in one of my courses this fall.
Thanks for this! The purpose of the midsemester conference is really two-fold: 1) for both myself and the students to reflect intentionally on their progress toward the course goals and 2) to get us on the same page about assessments of their work, including grade designations. I want them to practice assigning themselves a grade based on evidence of their submitted work, since that's what they'll have to do at the end of the semester. And I don't want there to be any surprises when we get there. But I do think the activity of assigning may grade get in the way of robust reflection on learning, since grades are tied up in so many things that *aren't* about learning. And it is a kind of foreign activity for students.
I too wonder about students’ ability to assess their own work, with the majority coming from traditional high schools that are invested in grades and standardized tests and formal, rote learning.
Colleges generally don’t seem to have space to support doing away with grades. Where more and more colleges have intense surveillance for “support” (and, frankly, retaining those who pay the bills!), they aren’t equipped for ungrading, narrative evaluations, or anything besides our standard grades (and grade inflations!).
Yes, self-assessment is definitely a skill that students have to build, and not one they're very used to. You're absolutely right that education isn't structured for it. You have to do a lot of work-arounds.