7 ms·

>After I explained the theory and the method, they peppered me with many of the questions that other ungraders have also faced. “If we ask you, will you tell us

>After I explained the theory and the method, they peppered me with many of the questions that other ungraders have also faced. “If we ask you, will you tell us what grade we have on a paper?” No, I answered, because I really won’t have put a grade on it. “If we decide halfway through the semester that we’re done revising something, will you grade it then?” No again, because I’m grading an entire portfolio, not individual pieces. “Will you tell me where I stand?” My comments on your work, and our conferences, should give you a good sense of how you’re progressing in the class. I think the teacher dismisses the concerns too quickly. The reality is that at the end of the semester he will have to put a numerical grade on the report card ... and in this 'ungrading', a unscrupulous teacher could punish or reward a student by 'making up' any grade they feel like and the student has no recourse if they disagree with the grade.

Dayshine 5y ago
> a unscrupulous teacher could punish or reward a student by 'making up' any grade they feel like and the student has no recourse if they disagree with the grade Surely the second assessor would catch that though? Or the external examiner's spot-checking?
- macspoofing 5y ago
  You want multiple teachers (completely disconnected from the actual class) to catch those issues? Isn't the point of this 'ungrading' policy to take in student context - which this second reviewer system completely upends. I still don't understand why grading assignments and giving that (instant) feedback to students is so bad.
silicon2401 5y ago
This is the same situation as any in which there are leaders who set rules and followers who have no say. Structure and guidelines protect the followers. It's the same as jobs where there aren't clear guidelines on time off, working remote, etc. Lack of structure is just freedom for leaders to become dictators. When there are clear rules and guidelines, then you're able to point to a violation and demand a solution. It's the whole reason society evolved laws in the first place.
- kqr 5y ago
  I know this is the idea, but do you know of any practical case where a bureaucracy of rules and guidelines have ever been (a) actually clear? and (b) not suffered from the same problems except now encoded in rules that are even more difficult to change? I mean, this entire thing about the grades is a great case in point: it's a bad system from the start, but it got encoded into rules a long time ago and now it's difficult to change it. You're suggesting adding more rules to fix it, but that just makes it even worse! There is a middle ground between chaos and full-on bureaucracy and it's "not giving single persons so goddamn much power over other people". With a healthy dose of democracy, you can collaborate on appropriate procedures without risk of enshrining unfair precedents into firm rules.
  - silicon2401 5y ago
    Yes, any of my several jobs that had clear rules and guidelines. I know what behavior is unacceptable and I could report a manager or director if I felt the need. I know I'm entitled to X days off a year and I have reason to complain if I'm not able to take that time off. I know how much my salary is and so on and so on. Regular jobs and schools will never be democratic because college students and employees don't have a direct say; at most they can encourage (within what limits their leadership allows) or quit. If you enjoy being in an unstructured environment, that's great. You would've loved my first job. I hate it. The more rules and bureaucracy a job has, the more I thrive. I don't care about democracy, I care about living my life as simply as possible, and rigid, plentiful rules are my preferred way of living.
    - kqr 5y ago
      Is your salary also determined by a clear function of years of experience? Do you know what your manager makes? Has anyone explained exactly how the number of days of vacation you get was determined? What's the process if you're unhappy with that? I get that it's very convenient to have fair and clear rules and formulae for everything. What I'm saying is that in practise, that's not actually what happens. What looks like clear rules, once you dig a level deeper, rarely is. In practise, the rules are almost always limited in their extent, arbitrary, and opaquely decided by the people in power in ways that disadvantage people not in power. Unfair rules are rarely changed or removed but generally just appended with more complex, opaque additional rules.
avs733 5y ago
background: I have tried ungrading in engineering courses, it freaks students out and tends to trigger process inappropriate optimization behaviors as opposed to learning orientation shifts...I've had better luck with a middle ground. overall statement of positionality - grades and summative assessment are necessary and important but are unrelated to creating learning, formative feedback is much more affective at creating learning. exactly. Students are people with lived experiences and expectations that drive how they perceive things. A lot of times things that are 'theoretically' better in education bomb in practice because they conflict with students' emotional/psychological needs, wants, and expectations. There are NORMS and all this does is mess with the norms the faculty can control - but not all the norms. The most important thing he is doing is cleaving formative from summative feedback. This isn't really a perfect with the underlying principles of ungrading...this isjust ungrading within the controlled climate of the course itself. Thats great, but the problem is his drive towards formative feedback over summative feedback is constrained by outside forces. There is still a grade at the end of the course and that makes it hard. And then add in that if too many students do well you get accused of 'grade inflation' (which is a whole nother ball of nonsense). Students KNOW there will be a grade at the end, to act as if there isn't is just introducing ambiguity not necessarily learning. You can bypass some of the problems with strong trust - but only some. Specific to the comment on rubrics, GOOD rubrics can't really be useful, self and peer evaluation can be useful, using the rubric to provide formative feedback can be useful. Revisions can be ESPECIALLY useful. But you can't truly (ugh...sorry, no true scotsman) within a typical university that demands I assign grades. Anything you do to try will be 'gamed' so the best you can do is make 'gaming the system' and 'learning' as similar as possible. I would love LOVE to just have all of the classes I teach be taken as pass/fail but they aren't and can't be based on the external systematic rules. I've settled on a tool called 'specifications grading' as a middle ground that basically translates learning behaviors and outcomes into a clear grading system.
- MengerSponge 5y ago
  <3 this. For technical courses, where work can be objectively right and wrong, specifications grading, aka standards-based grading, aka mastery based grading, is 100% the way to go. There are some "ungrading" practices that are useful, but the grade earned serves an important credentialing step, and clearly showing students the skills they need to master is the whole dang point.
plorkyeran 5y ago
Your grade in an English Literature class basically comes down to what grade the professor decides to assign you regardless of the grading method. There's no objective determination for what makes a paper an A paper versus a B paper, and plenty of people have stories about getting a C on a paper they thought deserved an A.
- Misdicorl 5y ago
  Yes, but you've removed the feedback loop that allows a student to adjust their output to accommodate their grader's wishes.
  - lostcolony 5y ago
    Not really; there is a literal feedback loop with the teacher writing comments/critiques, and the student responding to them. What is removed is the ability to say "this is good enough, I am meeting expectations, and am confident in staying the class" vs "I am not able to meet expectations and should instead drop it with a W instead of risking my GPA". That said, I think as a student if I'd had a teacher engage with me this way it would present enough of an opportunity to build trust that I'd be able to get a feeling as to whether they were invested in me improving my work, and use that to determine if I should stay in the class or not.
    - macspoofing 5y ago
      >there is a literal feedback loop with the teacher writing comments/critiques Sure - but words are ambiguous. Does the feedback mean I'm struggling, or is the feedback meant to elevate my already excellent work? Here's any idea, why not give a grade AND feedback. This way I, as a student, know objectively how I did, and what I need to do to get better.
- Auracle 5y ago
  We had a teacher in high school that was universally accepted as being sexist. I took "Honor's English" (basically "hard" English for more intelligent students) with her in 9th grade. There were 3 of us boys in her class of ~20 or so, and we were all on the high IQ end of the scale and good students. The girls were a mixed bag, including some that definitely shouldn't have been in the "honor's" class. They all got As and Bs. I pulled in the only Cs of my scholastic career. One of the guys got the exact same grade to the second decimal place on 4 papers in a row. My personal highlights were getting told my Polyphemus' cave diorama (boy, what a good use of time!) wasn't colorful enough, along with the time she accused me of plagiarism in front of the class in the middle of my book report because of the vocabulary I used. The sexism was so bad that the daughter of another teacher actually left mid-class to complain to the principal about it. Nothing was done.

Dayshine 5y ago

> a unscrupulous teacher could punish or reward a student by 'making up' any grade they feel like and the student has no recourse if they disagree with the grade Surely the second assessor would catch that though? Or the external examiner's spot-checking?

macspoofing 5y ago
You want multiple teachers (completely disconnected from the actual class) to catch those issues? Isn't the point of this 'ungrading' policy to take in student context - which this second reviewer system completely upends. I still don't understand why grading assignments and giving that (instant) feedback to students is so bad.

silicon2401 5y ago

This is the same situation as any in which there are leaders who set rules and followers who have no say. Structure and guidelines protect the followers. It's the same as jobs where there aren't clear guidelines on time off, working remote, etc. Lack of structure is just freedom for leaders to become dictators. When there are clear rules and guidelines, then you're able to point to a violation and demand a solution. It's the whole reason society evolved laws in the first place.

kqr 5y ago
I know this is the idea, but do you know of any practical case where a bureaucracy of rules and guidelines have ever been (a) actually clear? and (b) not suffered from the same problems except now encoded in rules that are even more difficult to change? I mean, this entire thing about the grades is a great case in point: it's a bad system from the start, but it got encoded into rules a long time ago and now it's difficult to change it. You're suggesting adding more rules to fix it, but that just makes it even worse! There is a middle ground between chaos and full-on bureaucracy and it's "not giving single persons so goddamn much power over other people". With a healthy dose of democracy, you can collaborate on appropriate procedures without risk of enshrining unfair precedents into firm rules.
- silicon2401 5y ago
  Yes, any of my several jobs that had clear rules and guidelines. I know what behavior is unacceptable and I could report a manager or director if I felt the need. I know I'm entitled to X days off a year and I have reason to complain if I'm not able to take that time off. I know how much my salary is and so on and so on. Regular jobs and schools will never be democratic because college students and employees don't have a direct say; at most they can encourage (within what limits their leadership allows) or quit. If you enjoy being in an unstructured environment, that's great. You would've loved my first job. I hate it. The more rules and bureaucracy a job has, the more I thrive. I don't care about democracy, I care about living my life as simply as possible, and rigid, plentiful rules are my preferred way of living.
  - kqr 5y ago
    Is your salary also determined by a clear function of years of experience? Do you know what your manager makes? Has anyone explained exactly how the number of days of vacation you get was determined? What's the process if you're unhappy with that? I get that it's very convenient to have fair and clear rules and formulae for everything. What I'm saying is that in practise, that's not actually what happens. What looks like clear rules, once you dig a level deeper, rarely is. In practise, the rules are almost always limited in their extent, arbitrary, and opaquely decided by the people in power in ways that disadvantage people not in power. Unfair rules are rarely changed or removed but generally just appended with more complex, opaque additional rules.

avs733 5y ago

background: I have tried ungrading in engineering courses, it freaks students out and tends to trigger process inappropriate optimization behaviors as opposed to learning orientation shifts...I've had better luck with a middle ground. overall statement of positionality - grades and summative assessment are necessary and important but are unrelated to creating learning, formative feedback is much more affective at creating learning. exactly. Students are people with lived experiences and expectations that drive how they perceive things. A lot of times things that are 'theoretically' better in education bomb in practice because they conflict with students' emotional/psychological needs, wants, and expectations. There are NORMS and all this does is mess with the norms the faculty can control - but not all the norms. The most important thing he is doing is cleaving formative from summative feedback. This isn't really a perfect with the underlying principles of ungrading...this isjust ungrading within the controlled climate of the course itself. Thats great, but the problem is his drive towards formative feedback over summative feedback is constrained by outside forces. There is still a grade at the end of the course and that makes it hard. And then add in that if too many students do well you get accused of 'grade inflation' (which is a whole nother ball of nonsense). Students KNOW there will be a grade at the end, to act as if there isn't is just introducing ambiguity not necessarily learning. You can bypass some of the problems with strong trust - but only some. Specific to the comment on rubrics, GOOD rubrics can't really be useful, self and peer evaluation can be useful, using the rubric to provide formative feedback can be useful. Revisions can be ESPECIALLY useful. But you can't truly (ugh...sorry, no true scotsman) within a typical university that demands I assign grades. Anything you do to try will be 'gamed' so the best you can do is make 'gaming the system' and 'learning' as similar as possible. I would love LOVE to just have all of the classes I teach be taken as pass/fail but they aren't and can't be based on the external systematic rules. I've settled on a tool called 'specifications grading' as a middle ground that basically translates learning behaviors and outcomes into a clear grading system.

MengerSponge 5y ago
<3 this. For technical courses, where work can be objectively right and wrong, specifications grading, aka standards-based grading, aka mastery based grading, is 100% the way to go. There are some "ungrading" practices that are useful, but the grade earned serves an important credentialing step, and clearly showing students the skills they need to master is the whole dang point.

plorkyeran 5y ago

Your grade in an English Literature class basically comes down to what grade the professor decides to assign you regardless of the grading method. There's no objective determination for what makes a paper an A paper versus a B paper, and plenty of people have stories about getting a C on a paper they thought deserved an A.

Misdicorl 5y ago
Yes, but you've removed the feedback loop that allows a student to adjust their output to accommodate their grader's wishes.
- lostcolony 5y ago
  Not really; there is a literal feedback loop with the teacher writing comments/critiques, and the student responding to them. What is removed is the ability to say "this is good enough, I am meeting expectations, and am confident in staying the class" vs "I am not able to meet expectations and should instead drop it with a W instead of risking my GPA". That said, I think as a student if I'd had a teacher engage with me this way it would present enough of an opportunity to build trust that I'd be able to get a feeling as to whether they were invested in me improving my work, and use that to determine if I should stay in the class or not.
  - macspoofing 5y ago
    >there is a literal feedback loop with the teacher writing comments/critiques Sure - but words are ambiguous. Does the feedback mean I'm struggling, or is the feedback meant to elevate my already excellent work? Here's any idea, why not give a grade AND feedback. This way I, as a student, know objectively how I did, and what I need to do to get better.
Auracle 5y ago
We had a teacher in high school that was universally accepted as being sexist. I took "Honor's English" (basically "hard" English for more intelligent students) with her in 9th grade. There were 3 of us boys in her class of ~20 or so, and we were all on the high IQ end of the scale and good students. The girls were a mixed bag, including some that definitely shouldn't have been in the "honor's" class. They all got As and Bs. I pulled in the only Cs of my scholastic career. One of the guys got the exact same grade to the second decimal place on 4 papers in a row. My personal highlights were getting told my Polyphemus' cave diorama (boy, what a good use of time!) wasn't colorful enough, along with the time she accused me of plagiarism in front of the class in the middle of my book report because of the vocabulary I used. The sexism was so bad that the daughter of another teacher actually left mid-class to complain to the principal about it. Nothing was done.