Research Spotlight: Student Perceptions of Ungrading
Insights from a survey at the University of Colorado Denver
Back at the beginning of the summer, I asked what subscribers would most like to read about in future iterations of the blog. One of the most popular answers was “recent research on ungrading.” Today’s post is the first of what I hope will be many spotlighting some of that research.
While there’s lots of work on the effects of traditional grading, good or ill, comparatively little exists on alternative grading of any kind, particularly at colleges and universities. That body of work, however, has been growing rapidly over the past few years. Most of what I’ve encountered so far narrates individual instructors’ experiences with ungrading. Fewer studies take a look at ungrading across different classes or institutions.
The 2024 article I’m sharing today is an exception to that rule:
Hasinoff, Amy A., Wendy Bolyard, Dennis DeBay, Joanna C. Dunlap, Annika C. Mosier, and Elizabeth Pugliano. 2024. “‘Success Was Actually Having Learned:’ University Student Perceptions of Ungrading.” Teaching and Learning Inquiry 12 (January): 1-22. https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.
Conducted by a group of teachers and researchers at the University of Colorado Denver, this study gathered the perspectives of 128 students across 14 ungraded classes taught by 10 different instructors at the institution. The courses spanned a variety of disciplines—from biology to art history—and the number of students in a given course ranged from four to 79.
The authors here took a fairly broad view of “ungrading,” which could include a constellation of practices like “focusing on formative rather than summative assessments, assessing assignments as complete or incomplete, encouraging students to revise and resubmit work until they achieve the learning outcome, and incorporating self-assessment and/or peer feedback” (2). They also, of course, include specific models like contract grading, specifications grading, and labor-based grading.
The survey asked students a series of closed- and open-ended questions, inviting them to compare their ungraded course to more traditional courses. The data is fascinating, and—no surprise—indicates hugely positive perceptions of ungrading among students. I encourage you to take a look at the article for yourself. Here are some things that stood out to me.
Students really felt care, trust, and support in ungraded courses: This is perhaps the most evident finding of the study. Of all 20 factors that students were directly asked about, they most clearly indicated high levels of “care,” “trust for students,” “support,” and “trust of instructors” in their ungraded courses.
Students reported higher levels of interest, enjoyment, and learning in ungraded courses—This doesn’t shock me, but the numbers for “interest sparked” are especially cool. Fully 87% of students said their ungraded course sparked their interest in the subject matter either “somewhat more” or “much more” than other courses. Interested students! Can you imagine?!
Students found feedback more helpful, and engaged with it more, in ungraded courses—77% of students found feedback either “somewhat more” or “much more” helpful in their ungraded classes, and 75% were “somewhat more” or “much more” engaged with it. This finding will confirm an important conclusion of many classic studies: students are more likely to read and learn from feedback when it is not attached to a grade. As someone who spent lots of time, in traditionally graded courses, watching students throw my carefully crafted comments in the trash on their way out the door, I’m especially glad to hear it.
Ungrading didn’t necessarily relieve stress—Although most students rated their stress level in ungraded courses as less or about the same as in other courses, 37% were either “somewhat more” or “much more” stressed in their ungraded courses. This mirrors something I’ve found with my own students: a nontrivial number of them are so anxious about the unfamiliarity or ambiguity of the grading system itself that the course simply replaces one form of grade-related stress with another. Obviously, this is not my favorite finding.
Ungrading didn’t make students forget about grades—Finally, and this one is a bit disheartening, 52% of students were either “much more” or “somewhat more” focused on grades in their ungraded course than they were in their other courses. Only 18% reported that they were less focused on grades in their ungraded course. It turns out that asking people not to think about something pretty much guarantees that they will think about it! And of course the fact that we still have to assign a final grade, despite all the work we do to minimize grades, is in the way here.
I’m happy to see larger-scale studies like this emerging! The findings confirm a lot of what I’ve heard anecdotally, and while the study has some limitations, I think it provides a valuable look at how students are experiencing ungrading.
I’m hoping to share more research on ungrading here on the blog, so I’d love to hear from you: if you have a favorite study or article, please share!
Not earlier research, but an article from a few years after this and I loved it (cited in Inoue's contract-based grading book, so it may be familiar to some) -- cited below. As a K-12 teacher of over 20 years -- and, frankly, as a student -- I'm shocked to know that in 1973 someone was writing this list of teaching techniques:
1. Never call on anybody who has not volunteered.
2. Never correct an interpretation.
3. Never berate students for lack of knowledge, understanding, or hard work.
4. Never use lecture as the dominant approach.
5. Never require specific projects at specific times.
And this is an incredible teaching philosophy for ungraders:
"But I believe that in a non-judgmental, unpunitive, encouraging context, students will want to work toward achieving self-styled and often very challenging goals. While nothing in the format of the course coerces a student to do anything which reason, energetic teaching, and the student's native curiosity do not inspire, I, needless to say, constantly encourage self-discipline and self-respecting work (p. 629)."
Mandel, B. J. (1973). Teaching without judging. College English, 34(5), 623-633. https://doi.org/10.2307/375330
As a side note, I just finished very inspiring research for my dissertation on my own class and the students' experiences with ungrading
The point you shared about increased student anxiety about the unfamiliarity of the grading method is something I have encountered. I always wonder about the hypothetical situation in which ungrading is more familiar (more instructors do it, or a student has taken multiple classes with an instructor who does it) and whether that anxiety falls away, or whether it is about the cognitive load of managing both traditionally graded and "ungraded" courses at the same time? Difficult to figure out (to my mind anyway)