Ungrading in Action

First major assignments are in!

Photo by AbsolutVision 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 June of 2023, it was originally written on February 24, 2023.

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This week, my students submitted their first major assignment. Or at least most of them did. I’ve been slowly writing and returning feedback for them. Here, I’ll talk about my process for giving feedback, promoting metacognition, and encouraging revision. 

Assignment Feedback

For this first assignment, students could choose to Outwrite the AI or Share Their Story. (See my earlier post for brief descriptions of these assignments.) I give them feedback in three ways: by leaving annotations directly on their work, by writing up summary comments, and by indicating where I think their work is positioned, from developing to excellent, on relevant rubric categories:

Rubric for the “Outwrite the AI” assignment

Rubric for the “Share Your Story” assignment

I’ve used this system before, and while I have some doubts about the rubrics (as I explained last week), I find them useful for the actual process of giving feedback. 

I am truly enjoying reading and responding to my students’ work. It helps that the class is themed around a topic that I’m interested (education) in but also that I’ve encouraged students to write on issues and stories that are close to them. I don’t want to go into detail about the kinds of things my students are writing, especially in the Share Your Story assignment. But I will say that some of the things these young people have experienced at the hands of the educational system in this country are appalling. 

I noted this in a Twitter thread that I wrote about my Outwrite the AI assignment, but I’ll repeat it here: I get the sense that no one has ever asked these students about their experiences or what they think, especially about school itself—or at least no one has been willing to listen to them. One of the best parts of ungrading in this class is that I can invite students to share things that are important to them without having to slap a number or letter on their work at the end of the day—an act that can feel trivializing and dehumanizing after students have poured their heart into their writing. And we can talk in a real way about how their perspectives can contribute to larger conversations about schooling and how they can convey those perspectives most effectively, rather than talking about how they can “get an A” in the course. 

This is one example of how moving away from traditional grading systems invites not only a change to actual evaluation processes but a reorientation of everything we’re doing in the classroom. When I started ungrading, I also started crafting more authentic assignments, asking students to experiment with their work, creating incentives that aren’t tied to grades, and—perhaps most importantly—encouraging more metacognitive work and self-assessment. 

Metacognitive Reflection

On that subject, I also ask students to fill out a Reflection Form with every Major Assignment they submit. In the form, they answer the following questions:

1. Look back at the rubric we co-created for this assignment. How would you assess yourself on each of the rubric categories? 

2. What do you think are the major strengths of this submission?

3. What do you think are the biggest weaknesses?

4. About how much time did you spend writing this piece? 

5. How, if at all, did you use AI in completing this assignment? 

6. If you utilized AI, what did you learn about your own writing process and about the capabilities and limitations of AI text generation?

7. How do you feel about your writing process and what you invested in the assignment? 

8. Anything else you’d like me to know about this submission?

So far, about half of my students have forgotten to submit the Reflection Form. Oops. This feels like my fault: I haven’t been as clear about directions for assignment submissions as I could be.

But the assignment Reflection Forms students have submitted have been really useful. The form gives them a chance to practice the self-assessment that I’ll ask them to do in a bigger way later on. And it gives me a chance to see if our expectations are aligning. If students rate themselves as “excellent” when I’m thinking “developing” (or vice versa), then we need to talk; if they spent ten hours on an assignment that should have taken five, then we need to talk; if they cut and pasted large chunks of their work from an AI generator, then we need to talk. The goal of our follow-up conversations, to be clear, is not to get students to agree with me but rather to see if we can both come to a better understanding of their work and working habits.

These forms also give me useful information for writing feedback. Students might say that they rushed through the writing and thought it needed more time to develop. Or that they felt they were taking a risk with a specific choice they made and wanted to know if it paid off. Or that they worked really, really hard on the piece and are super proud of it. All of these things will influence the kind of feedback I provide and the way I provide it. 

Opportunities for Revision

I’ve honestly been a bit surprised by student responses to this first round of feedback—specifically by the number of students who are already thinking about their revision plans. Since the first weeks of class, my students have seemed to struggle just to get assignments in regularly. I was starting to worry that my revision requirement, and the lack of structure around it, was going to be a huge problem. Here is how I’ve laid it out:

The minimum requirement is that students revise at least one Major Assignment by the end of the semester. But they may revise any assignment, and receive additional feedback on it, twice before they submit their work in a final portfolio (constituting their third attempt). I don’t have specific dates or timelines for these revisions, since every student will be working on different tracks. I’ll ask students to tell me their revision goals and set individual due dates for those revisions in the larger Self-Assessments they complete throughout the semester. But because the deadlines will be different for each student, they aren’t formalized in the course calendar. 

I’ve explained that I assign fewer papers in the course than in some other writing courses because I want them to focus on depth rather than breadth, revising rather than continuously first-drafting. I’ve also been reminding them that it will be difficult to make a case for an A or B in the course if they don’t complete multiple revisions—revisions which will provide excellent evidence for them to draw on when they’re presenting proof of their learning at the end of the semester. 

My thought was that most students would read the feedback, shrug, and put it away until the end of the semester, when they were starting to think more immediately about their final grades and worried about completing all the course requirements. I expected only one or two to follow up on the feedback in the weeks after receiving it. Instead, several of the students who have received feedback already have expressed interest in revising and/or speaking to me further about the comments I left on their work. One student even submitted a revised version of his first draft by the end of the week. 

I’m not sure what motivated this enthusiasm. I would like to think that it’s because they’re excited about the work they’ve done so far and have been encouraged by my feedback. I tried to share my suggestions in a motivational way. Specifically, I let students know that I thought they were writing on important topics and that their voices and perspectives as students were critically important in conversations about education. 

I also tried to normalize the struggle involved in the writing process and my belief that students could succeed at it. I intentionally implemented “wise feedback,” noting for each student that I was providing feedback on their work because I had high expectations for that work, and I was confident that the student could meet those expectations. All of this is true! These students have real things to say and valuable contributions to make to the discourse on education. And I’m confident that with some hard work and guidance they can communicate their ideas and experiences about education at a high level.

So, despite the fact that some students still haven’t handed in their assignment, we had some real ungrading wins this week. I hope students continue to feel motivated to keep improving the work they’re doing in the course.