Midsemester Conferences in an Ungraded Course

Wins, Losses, Reactions

Photo by John Schnobrich on Unsplash

This blog post is part of an ongoing series of reflections completed during my Spring 2023 writing course. While the post is being published in July of 2023, it was originally written on March 10, 2023.

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This week, students and I sat down together for individual conferences to assess their progress in the course so far. Today, I’ll talk about how those conferences went as well as student responses to a survey question about ungrading.

But first, a small hitch in my ungrading plans:

Reporting Midterm Grades

I honestly forgot about the fact that I might have to submit midterm grades to the university for my first-year students. This ordinarily wouldn’t be a problem, as I would just submit the grade that we agreed on in our individual conferences. What I didn’t realize was that these grades were due (weirdly?) the Monday preceding spring break, before I had spoken to most of my students about their work in the course.

I fired off a quick email to let students know that I would be posting midterm grades. And that their grade would reflect my personal assessment of their work based on the same metrics they used for their self-assessment. I hastened to add that we would discuss these grades at our conferences, and I was eager to hear from them about whether their assessments aligned with mine. Moreover, I stressed, the midterm “grade” means very little in a course where they are free to keep revising their work and there are no grade averages to contend with.

Ultimately, this did not cause as much trouble as I suspected it might; most students didn’t even look at their midterm grades before they came to individual conferences. But it’s something I’ll definitely have to design around in the future. 

Individual Conferences: Wins and Losses

It turns out that, as usual, my fears of a misalignment between students’ self-assessment and my assessment of their work were unfounded—at least in terms of the assigned grade itself. Students generally assigned themselves the grade I would have assigned them, within half a letter grade either way. Though they also tended to give themselves a lot of latitude. A few said things like “A or B,” “B or C.” I don’t think anyone was ultimately unhappy about their assigned midterm grade, and I believe this is mostly due to the fact that they can revise any of the work they’ve submitted up to this point. 

Even though the meetings went well, I’m not entirely satisfied with how students spoke about their progress or justified their self-assessment. Mostly, they evaluated themselves based on whether or not they had completed the assignments, whether or not they submitted on time, and how often they attended class. (And one student even said he gave himself the grade he did as a motivator for the remainder of the semester!) Many didn’t speak directly about the quality of their work or the development of their writing skills until prompted. And even then, students tended to simply repeat what I said to them in the feedback I gave on their first major assignment. 

I had several conversations with students about why timeliness or mere completion was not really the best criteria for evaluating their work—and while I took these measures into account, the improvement in their writing skills was much more important to me. But I can tell I’ll have to work a little harder to help students think about their work in terms of learning and improvement, not box-checking. 

I also found that students didn’t necessarily know what kinds of work to prioritize when thinking about their progress. I gave their informal weekly Writing Practice assignments less weight than the Major Assignment, but students didn’t necessarily make that distinction—and I realize now that I haven’t been very clear about it. I’m planning to speak with them when we return to class about how to conceive of their learning progress and what criteria they should consider when evaluating themselves. 

Student Reactions to Ungrading

The good news is that students like ungrading so far. I asked them to share any thoughts they had about the grading system on our self-assessment form—and asked if I could share their thoughts anonymously on this blog. Everyone said yes! I’ve pasted below the question I asked and student comments, just as I received them and in the order that I received them.

How are you finding the grading system thus far in the course? How is it supporting or not supporting your learning? 

• “I feel like the grading system of this course is really beneficial to me as a learner, not just a student. I am able to work at my own pace, and my creativity is not shut in a box. I feel like in typical writing classes, you are writing just for a grade, but in this one I am writing for myself and what I am passionate about.”

• “I don't know what is the grading system for this course since there is no grade yet but I think the feedback with rubric help me a lot if that's what grading system means.”

• “I like it I feel like in this class I don't have to ‘play the game’ to be successful. It's genuinely about learning.”

• “I feel as though I learn better with the open discussions and that the grading system is unique, the only thing is I don't know what grade to tell my coaches when they ask.”

• “I feel as the new grading system has helped me ten fold because of the fact I don’t have top worry about due dates in terms of getting a zero and then further stressing abut the grade I am going to get. Instead I can meet with the professor and focus more on quality of the work and be more focused on actually bettering myself instead of the physical grade. I also love the fact we can keep revising and working on an assignment after it it actually due. The assignment extension form also is an extreme stress reliever.”

• “I think it is a great system and I think I can get an A in the class as long as I keep putting the time in.”

• “It's supporting me right now because it's showing me what I lack and what I have to improve on in the classroom. I can also see why it wouldn't support me too, it kind of seems like there are no consequences but I know there are.”

• “I like the grading system because it focuses on learning instead of grades.”

• “I am enjoying the grading system so far but I am also have mixed feelings of anxiety and excitement because I have never been in a classroom like this before so I'm not quite sure what to anticipate.”

• “I like the fact that it is more hills it if [? sic] but I also kind of like having set grades for assigments so you know what you need to improve for where you stand in class”

While shared anonymously here, the comments were not anonymous when I received them—so I take them with a grain of salt. But the feedback here is very similar to feedback I’ve received in past ungraded classes: mostly positive, with some uncertainty or anxiety. I’m most proud of the sentiments expressed in the first few comments. I’m trying to help students get out of the mindset of performing studenthood or “playing the game,” and nothing I’ve tried so far except ungrading has helped to move the needle on that. But also: nothing I’ve tried so far in my ungraded classes has been successful at relieving feelings of uncertainty or satisfying student concerns about knowing “where you stand in class.” It’s something I’m still working on. 

Another thing I’m wondering about now is what to tell students who need to report their course grades to the external entities who are keeping up with their academic progress. There are a veritable army of these entities for first-year students: advisors, bridge programs of various kinds, coaches/athletics tutors, parents… When I’m asked for progress reports from university units, I do my best to explain where the student stands in a qualitative way, but I don’t typically provide a specific letter or number grade unless I have to. I’m wondering now if I should speak to students (perhaps on an individual basis) about how to communicate their “grades” to the para-academic units they interact with.

I’ll stop there for this week. Next week, during spring break, I’ll create a round-up of my own midsemester reflections on ungrading—I have lots of thoughts! Stay tuned.