(Un)grading in the Age of AI
New tech calls for new approaches to assessment
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 10, 2023.
I think this has been the funnest week of class so far, since we got to discuss generative AI, a topic that the students seemed interested in and that’s been occupying my thinking for several weeks. In particular, we talked about AI text generators: what they are, how they work, the ethical issues surrounding their use, and their potential and limitations in supporting learning.
You can read more about my takeaways from the AI side of the conversation in a Twitter thread I wrote (and which received much more attention than I anticipated). Here, I want to talk a bit about the relationship between AI and assessment and how that relationship manifests in the assignments I designed for the class.
New Assignments for Meaning, Growth, & Reflection
As many others in the teaching space have suggested, the advent of ChatGPT and related technologies should lead us to re-examine what kinds of assignments we’re asking students to complete and why. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the kinds of writing assignments that work best in a ChatGPT world are also the kinds of assignments that I moved toward when I adopted ungrading.
Such assignments are authentic and personal, meaning they ask students to complete tasks that have relevance and value to them beyond the walls of the classroom. They are process-oriented and prioritize growth, meaning that students can continue improving their work throughout the semester and are evaluated not just on their final product but also on how they got to that final product. And they encourage metacognition, meaning that students are continually reflecting on their thinking and writing processes.
I put a lot of thought at the beginning of the semester into creating major assignment options that encouraged an appropriate use of AI and that would align with my ungrading practices. Here’s what I came up with.
Outwrite the AI
I have to give credit to Karen Costa for this first idea. In this assignment, students create a prompt according to a formula I provide (“Write a ___ for an audience of ___ arguing that ___”) and feed that prompt to ChatGPT. They copy and paste the text it generates into a Google doc and evaluate its strengths and weaknesses, annotating the text as they go. They then rewrite the piece, making it their own and making it better.
I like this assignment because it prompts students to think deeply both about the affordances and the limitations of AI, along with more typical writing-classroom considerations of audience and purpose. Moreover, it prioritizes process alongside product.
Share Your Story
For this assignment, students are invited to share a reflection on their experience(s) within higher education or K12 classrooms for an audience of their choice, to accomplish a specific purpose of their choice. They then annotate their own work, explaining what strategies they used to accomplish their purpose or appeal to their audience and why.
When you ask ChatGPT to do these kinds of personal reflections, the text it turns out is pretty cliche (at least for now). With enough prompting and refinement, it might be able to produce something passable, but at that point, you might as well write the piece yourself. I think asking students to explain their choices also lessens the temptation to misuse AI.
I never assigned this kind of work when I used traditional grading, because it felt so crass to put a number on someone else’s deeply-felt personal reflection. Ungrading has removed that barrier for me. I hope it also allows students to share their stories a little more freely.
What Learning Looks Like Photo Essay
This multimodal assignment was inspired by a recent book of photographs called What Teaching Looks Like, by Cassandra Volpe Horii and Martin Springborg. It asks students to create a photo essay of “what learning looks like,” designed (again) with a specific audience and purpose in mind. In addition to writing captions for the photos, they also write a brief reflection that explains their choices.
This takes writing largely out of the equation, but still allows students to practice their rhetorical analysis and persuasive skills. I also like that it provides the opportunity to engage in a visual medium that might be more comfortable for students and to share learning experiences that are important to them.
Make It Better Proposal
This one, inspired by an assignment in John Warner’s The Writer’s Practice, is fairly simple. Students identify a problem in higher education, do research on the problem, and write an evidence-based proposal for a solution, directed to someone who can implement that solution. I’ll ask them to be as specific as possible in identifying their problem and even encourage them to concentrate on an issue localized to this campus. ChatGPT will not have enough information to write anything that focused, and it makes the assignment more authentic for students. I’ll also ask them to incorporate quite a bit of research—something ChatGPT still can’t do with much accuracy.
Reflections and Self-Assessments
In addition to these pieces of writing, I ask students to submit assignment reflections—in which they answer questions about their writing process and use of AI in each project—and regular self-assessments—in which they evaluate their work in the course overall.
My traditionally-graded courses used to emphasize traditional essays, sometimes of the five-paragraph variety. Around the time I moved to ungrading, I also started creating assignments that felt more authentic, that asked students to draw on their own expertise and experience (rather than someone else’s), and that incorporated metacognitive elements. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that such assignments are better suited to the age of ChatGPT than the traditional essay. Prioritizing the development of the student as a human being rather than the student’s production of tedious and formulaic, but word-perfect, final products, seems like a more sustainable teaching model in a world where this tech is advancing so rapidly.
Ungrading and the Question of Structure
On a practical level, ungrading in the class continues to go as expected. Their first Major Assignment isn’t due until 2/20, but I’ve been leaving brief, informal comments on students’ Weekly Writing Practice assignments, which I actually enjoy doing.
One thing I’m not entirely happy with: submissions for these practice assignments have been a little spotty. And attendance continues to be uneven. Because this is the first course I’ve taught at UM, I’m not sure whether this is just a reality of student engagement at this particular time and place or a result of my ungrading policies. I suspect conditions would be the same even if I had very strict compliance policies that were tied to grades, but I can’t be certain.
I do worry a bit that students are spottily engaged because I haven’t effectively communicated my expectations for engagement. Did I ever actually state, outside of the syllabus, that I expect them to show up for every class meeting they possibly can? Or that they should submit all the assigned work if they expect to learn things / provide evidence for an A? Or did I just assume they would know that?
I think this is just my anxiety talking. And even if it’s not, the midsemester conferences exist so that we can align our expectations and students can make any changes they need to make for the latter half of the semester.
Many of these engagement issues seem to stem from students’ struggles with executive function. I’m hoping that the structures in my course aren’t exacerbating those struggles. Though I have a lenient extension policy, all the assignments have specific due dates. And while students have a lot of freedom in what they want to write about and for whom, I have included specific writing prompts, step-by-step instructions, and scaffolded practice for everything they complete in the course.
That said, I think I’ll have to do more to help some students manage their time, prioritize tasks, and actually show up for class and scheduled meetings. Stay tuned to find out whether I succeed.