The Grading Conference 2025: Some Takeaways

On alt grading research, justice and equity, and liking student writing

Last week, I had the pleasure of participating in the sixth annual Grading Conference, a virtual gathering of (mostly) higher ed instructors who are interested in alternative grading. Almost 1,000 educators from across the country, and the world, registered to attend! This was my third year attending the conference and my second helping to organize it.

During the actual event, the organizers spend a lot of time behind the scenes making sure everything is running smoothly—meaning that we have little brain space left for actually absorbing the content of the keynotes and presentations (at least while they’re happening)! But thanks to this year’s fantastic team of volunteer Zoom helpers, I was able to get more out of the sessions than I did in 2024. Here are a few of my takeaways.

We’re seeing a lot more research on alternative grading.

Almost every time slot during the three-day gathering included a session in which scholars presented findings from their research studies. My sense (without having done an actual meta-analysis) is that this research is still mostly focused on 1) individual classroom experiments and 2) student and instructor perceptions of alternative grading. Large-scale studies and work on other aspects of these grading practices are slowly emerging. But it’s simply not true that there is “no research” on alternative grading. It’s happening! And more is happening every year.

Students are on board.

Student perceptions of alternative grading were a key theme of the conference—we even had two undergraduate panels (neither of which I was able to attend, unfortunately!). Obviously, students are not a monolith, and their views of alternative grading are probably as variable as those of individual instructors. But we’re seeing lots of indications that alternative grading is working for students. They’re reporting less stress, increased motivation, a stronger sense of classroom community, and a greater focus on learning in alternatively graded classes. I’m excited about this research, and about the fact that we’re bringing more student voices into the conversation directly.

We’re considering nuances and questioning our assumptions about alternative grading.

Some presentations also discussed negative student experiences with alternative grading: lack of clarity, confusion about grades, or increased workload. These insights are crucial to helping us improve our practices.

As a collaborative grader in the humanities, I was especially interested in one finding of Amy Ernstes’s dissertation research. Students in her qualitative study observed that some forms of alternative grading may enable greater freedom of speech, since students aren’t just trying to parrot what the instructor wants to hear in order to get a good grade. But this freedom of speech can be a double-edged sword for some marginalized students: while open dialogue is good, harmful comments are not, and in some students’ experience, the number of such comments seemed to increase in alternatively graded classes. Creating a strong sense of mutual respect and community responsibility, then, may be especially important for instructors employing alternative grading in discussion-based contexts.

Like Amy, many presenters illuminated the complexities of how alternative grading might affect certain student populations, challenging some of our assumptions along the way. For instance, one group of researchers discussed how specifications grading seems to help marginalized students earn passing grades at higher rates in chemistry lab courses but also fails to mitigate opportunity gaps between these students and their more advantaged counterparts.

Another example: Many instructors worry about whether or not alternative grading provides sufficient support for neurodivergent students (though, in my opinion both “alternative grading” and “neurodivergence” are such capacious categories that it’s difficult to make any definitive statements here). In her presentation, my colleague

Sarah Silverman

argued that there is at least one characteristic of alternative grading that makes it well-suited to the needs of neurodivergent students: its “tolerance for error.” Alternative grading allows both students and instructors to make, and learn from, mistakes (particularly breakdowns in communication) without incurring serious consequences for either party. While this certainly doesn’t mean that all aspects of alternative grading are good for all neurodivergent students, it does illuminate one important way in which alternative grading approaches can align with neurodiversity-informed approaches.

We’re not backing down on inclusion, equity, and justice.

I already mentioned several presentations that highlighted how alternative grading might support or fail to support historically marginalized students in specific ways. These were not the only ones—and a commitment to inclusion, equity, and justice were evident in the conference’s keynotes as well.

In her talk, my University of Mississippi colleague Eden Tanner shared the story of how she came to alternative grading (which she has also shared in her interviews on the Grading Podcast and Derek Bruff’s Intentional Teaching). It involved a realization that her underrepresented students weren’t succeeding in chemistry at the same rates as their more advantaged peers and her conviction that continuing to perpetuate this inequity was unacceptable. These commitments led Eden to re-envision her grading system to better support student learning, bringing it more closely in line with her larger goal of helping all students see themselves as scientists.

In his barn-burner of a keynote the following day, Jeff Anderson similarly connected our decisions about grades to larger cultural narratives that can either perpetuate or oppose racial and class-based oppression. Through one particularly memorable Venn diagram, he argued that traditional letter grades sit at the intersection of eugenics, behaviorism, and antidemocracy as historical forces. (Jeff explains this position more fully on the Grading Podcast, in a rare two part interview.)

So, I don’t think, despite the current political climate, that we’re done talking about how we can make our institutions more inclusive, equitable, and just spaces for our students. Maybe it’s too early to say, and maybe this is just wishful thinking—especially given recent efforts to dismantle the kinds of infrastructure we need to study educational disparities. But I have faith in this community, and its commitment to helping all students thrive.

Relatedly, my favorite insight of the conference was this:

Actually liking student work is essential to our own work as educators.

As a writing teacher, I expected that Asao B. Inoue’s keynote would resonate strongly with me. But I didn’t expect that it would do so by making such a simple point. I can’t remember a single time, in my 10+ years as an educator, that anyone has ever talked to me about “liking” student work, or students themselves, until Asao’s keynote. But I think it’s foundational. You can’t get anywhere without it.

It reminds me of a student remark on an episode of NYT’s The Daily two years ago that I can’t stop thinking about. The topic was (what else?) generative AI and cheating. The anonymous student related their experience of using AI to write a portion of an assignment that they wouldn’t otherwise have been able to complete by the deadline. They gave ChatGPT a page they had already written, asked it to finish the paper, reworded the output slightly, and turned it in. When they received their essay back, the student noticed that nearly all the professor’s corrections were for the first part of the paper, the part that they had written themself. The second part, written by ChatGPT, had almost no comments. “I got an A,” the student said. “And my professor actually liked the ChatGPT part of the paper more than mine.”

My professor actually liked the ChatGPT part of the paper more than mine.

I think our first inclination on hearing such a comment might be to say, “Whoa, whoa, whoa—it’s not about whether or not we like your work. We grade based on quality.” We want to assure students that liking has nothing to do with it. We are objective assessors of performance. We are unswayed by any human feelings of fondness or appreciation!

Set aside, for a moment, the fact that separating our feelings about student work from our assessment of it is probably impossible, or at least more complicated than we might assume. Let’s consider, instead, whether or not such a thing is actually desirable. Do we really want to move through student work attempting to tamp down or separate out our human reactions to it, so that we can “judge” it “objectively”? Do we have to? Or, put yourself on the other side of the exchange: when we ask others to read our writing, in all our vulnerability, don’t we want them to like it? Don’t we want to feel, even in reading their critical feedback, that they were moved or intrigued or delighted by what we created? Or at least that they weren’t indifferent to it? Isn’t that what students want, too?

I’m heartbroken by the idea that any student would think that a teacher “likes” the output of a large language model better than something they themselves wrote. I’m even more heartbroken that their belief is, in many cases, justified. Why does it seem that many of us dislike student work (and sometimes students themselves)? What is in the way of liking in our classrooms? What kind of transformative effects might more liking bring about?

I think these questions are inextricably bound up with questions about the way we grade and assess students. And I’m glad Asao’s keynote provided an opportunity to think about them.

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I wasn’t able to attend every conference session, so I’m sure I’ve missed some important themes. If you attended the 2025 Grading Conference, please share your own takeaways below! And if not, I hope you’ll consider checking out the great work being done at the conference and the Center for Grading Reform more broadly.

Recordings of most 2025 conference sessions should be available in the next few weeks. Until then, check out the archive of past materials on the Grading Conference website.