Mark - you can access videos from previous conferences on www.centerforgradingreform.org - go to "Conferences" and then "The Grading Conference" and look for the button labeled "Past Conferences".
I’ve often received quizzical, if not antagonistic, looks when I’ve said, “Actually, I don’t mind grading (papers).” What I mean is exactly what you’ve summarized from Inoue’s keynote—I like reading my students’ work. Alt grading also helped me foreground the “liking” part, which ultimately benefits the quality of the feedback. I do NOT like the time it takes, so I’m still working on that, but I will not supplant pedagogy with efficiency for efficiency’s sake (I’m looking at you, ill-conceived AI “tools” to make teaching more “efficient”).
I wonder, if in part, that the "liking the AI more" is more of a symptom of the student is a human and has space to grow (i.e. feedback focused on the student work). The AI isn't human and it's writing has little if any growth.
I also really appreciated Asao Inoue’s keynote. There is an emotional weight to our work, and some of that bleeds into what we do and how we do it.
The question of wide-scale research...that's a pickle. A longitudinal study, following people who don't have to get grades, might be fun, but of course would take a while. Maybe a study looking at graduates of colleges without grades and graduates of colleges with grades (focused on those who got to take a couple of classes with alt-grading practices)....
Mark - you can access videos from previous conferences on www.centerforgradingreform.org - go to "Conferences" and then "The Grading Conference" and look for the button labeled "Past Conferences".
The videos from this year's conference (with a few exceptions such as the keynotes) will become available sometime in September. Also, if you want to see Jeff Anderson's Keynote he has posted it on his blog at https://jeffandersonmath.wordpress.com/2025/04/30/letter-grades-cause-learning-cancer-what-might-we-do-instead/
Thank you, Sharona!
Thanks Emily. I was really interested by your reflections on the conference, which, to my shame, I hadn't heard of before.
Do you know when and where videos from this year's conference will be made avilable?
And how do I get involved next year?
I’ve often received quizzical, if not antagonistic, looks when I’ve said, “Actually, I don’t mind grading (papers).” What I mean is exactly what you’ve summarized from Inoue’s keynote—I like reading my students’ work. Alt grading also helped me foreground the “liking” part, which ultimately benefits the quality of the feedback. I do NOT like the time it takes, so I’m still working on that, but I will not supplant pedagogy with efficiency for efficiency’s sake (I’m looking at you, ill-conceived AI “tools” to make teaching more “efficient”).
I wonder, if in part, that the "liking the AI more" is more of a symptom of the student is a human and has space to grow (i.e. feedback focused on the student work). The AI isn't human and it's writing has little if any growth.
I also really appreciated Asao Inoue’s keynote. There is an emotional weight to our work, and some of that bleeds into what we do and how we do it.
The question of wide-scale research...that's a pickle. A longitudinal study, following people who don't have to get grades, might be fun, but of course would take a while. Maybe a study looking at graduates of colleges without grades and graduates of colleges with grades (focused on those who got to take a couple of classes with alt-grading practices)....