Pulling out a red pen, instructors take on the often-grueling task of designing assessment practices and grading their students. In Chapter 11, “Grades–Ugh,” Cathy Davidson and Christina Katopodis continue their engagement with participatory learning by challenging assumptions about the history of grading and share assessment approaches that embrace an ungrading pedagogy. The authors of The New College Classroom share “Rather than a summary achievement, ungrading redesigns assessment as a formative process, offering feedback with the goal of improvement. It helps students to ask profound questions: Where am I going? How am I going? Where to next?” (224). There is a desire to instill student agency over learning, and to provide flexibility in assessing the processes and deliverables of student learning within our classes. For many, assessment practices may not be something you think of as an aspect of our courses that could foster student agency. Davidson and Katopodis address this hesitation as they challenge readers to reevaluate how assessment, a structural foundation of most courses, can become an integral part of one’s active learning pedagogy.
“Rather than a summary achievement, ungrading redesigns assessment as a formative process, offering feedback with the goal of improvement. It helps students to ask profound questions: Where am I going? How am I going? Where to next?”
Davidson and Katopodis
Davidson and Katopodis have taken on the lofty task of providing a resource that every instructor, regardless of discipline, should be able to turn to for guidance as they work to make their classrooms as spaces that foster active learning. Davidson and Katopodis continuously reinforce the central goal of supporting all students, sharing in the preface “Our goal has been to offer practical answers to a crucial question: how do we teach for every student–not only for the ones who most resemble us, their instructors?” (xii). As I continued to read the following chapters, I realized that the ambiguity surrounding “every student” is most likely intentional. As many experienced instructors know, no matter how many times you teach the same class, every section will be a unique experience made up of individuals who carry with them their own knowledge, needs, and learning desires. It is important to remember that this chapter, and the rest of The New College Classroom, is not providing a prescriptive approach to teaching. Instead, Davidson and Katopodis have created a resource to inspire innovation in our classrooms as we challenge ourselves and our students to embrace active learning practices. Anyone who must grade student work should take the time to read “Grades—Ugh” as the chapter addresses ways to elevate grading, reflective of anti-racist and feminist pedagogy, providing overviews and examples of how to enact such changes across a range of courses that vary in content, size, format, and institutional limitations.
In the first heading of Chapter 11, “A Brief History of Grading,” Davidson and Katopodis share that despite living in an age of formative feedback, as reflective in our public writing practices of evaluating and rating services, businesses, and entertainment, educational assessment practices are seemingly bound to reductive practices of the Industrial Age, like that of multiple-choice tests and letter grade systems (227). Surprisingly, in the United States, the first institution to move away from discursive feedback was the Massachusetts women’s college Mt. Holyoke, who instituted letter grades as an objective, summative assessment practice in 1897. The initial shift to letter grades was adaptive, yet, as we have come to realize, fails to provide students with formative feedback that encourages continued improvement and learning. In the proceeding headings, “So What’s Wrong with Grading?,” and “I Can’t Just Give Up on Grades—I’d Get Fired,” Davidson and Katopodis discuss the powerful yet flawed nature of grading and continue to reinforce the value of feedback. Referring to Ruth Butler’s 1980’s study that encourages instructors to provide feedback on student work, the authors share “that grades not only distract students from learning but they also detract from learning even when accompanied by careful feedback” (232). Another grading suggestion, as inspired by Rosalie Metro from the University of Missouri College of English, is to shift the classroom level assessment focus to the process of learning instead of the final product of a class project or exam. Metro leans into revision and scaffolding of activities and assignments to assist her students in reaching learning objectives and prioritizes student learning necessary knowledge and skills to pass certification boards and effectively teach their own classes (232). As readers will notice, the push for formative feedback practices is a central thread of the chapter. “Formative feedback is not about “making the grade.” Rather it’s about students learning. It’s about helping our students to thrive, in the classroom and beyond” (243).
Under the heading “Grades Encourage Cheating,” the authors touch on the topic of student cheating, nodding briefly to the history of “paper mills” that sell students’ written papers and the prevalent use of plagiarism detection software, such as Turnitin. As someone who teaches writing and rhetoric undergraduate courses, I found myself disappointed reading this section as Davidson and Katopodis gloss over the tensions surrounding the evaluation of student writing and fail to address any other mode in which students may be tempted to cheat beyond essay writing. Readers may wonder what Davidson and Katopodis have to say about the public discourse regarding the relationship between student writing and AI technology, such as ChatGPT. Setting themselves up to discuss recommended assessment models of contract grading and peer badging, the authors suggest that instructors of writing focused courses should consider contract grading as a collaborative assessment practice that encourages students to revise and develop their own writerly voices.
Instructors who have flexibility in assessment design should take the time to read the following headings, “Contract Grading” and “Peer Badging—Online and Off,” that offer contract grading and peer badging as alternative assessment practices that embrace the idea of “ungrading.” Both contract grading and peer badging are designed with the encouragement of metacognition being central to student success, and the authors take time to elaborate on how other instructors have implemented these assessment models in their own classes. Again, it is important to remember that this chapter is a starting point and that instructors who decide to take up one of the suggested assessment models should pursue further reading and conversation with others as they navigate the implementation of such systems.
Contract grading is the practice of developing a contract that students agree to at the beginning of the semester that explicitly outlines the requirements for each potential letter grade a student may aim to achievement. It should be noted that the successful implementation of contract grading is dependent on class size and institutional assessment policies (236). This system of assessment is rooted in anti-racist pedagogical practices, a history that is not touched on within the chapter despite the citing of Asao Inoue, an innovator of contract grading as a labor-based grading. For further information on labor-based grading, visit Asao Inoue’s “Labor-Based Grading Resource” page.
Peer badging is a practice that can be adapted to accompany contract grading or be a separate practice of peer-based assessment. “Peer badging is one way of inviting students to decide quality without being in the untenable (and potentially unethical) position of grading and judging their peers” (237). “The method was originally developed, decades ago, by open-source computer programmers to counter the problem of anonymity in freelance, online collaborative projects,” and has been adapted for gaming and commercial use (238). Integrating peer badging in her own classes, Davidson shares that it is a productive tool for group work as “students learn how to recognize and reward with clarity, developing standards as they go.” (239). Both contract grading and peer badging are systems that rely on students to embrace accountability over their labor and actively learn as they determine what they want to gain from their class experience.
Just like our students, it is important to partake in metacognition as we reflect on, adapt, and continue to enact participatory and student-center pedagogies.
Sidney Turner
I have been fortunate to teach writing and rhetoric undergraduate courses in departments that have granted me agency over my assessment practices. I have embraced rubric based grading, contract grading, and portfolio grading (which happens to be the assessment model I am most fond of). I encourage instructors who are interested in contract grading to also research portfolio grading as an additional assessment model that encourages metacognition and active learning. Through portfolio assessment, students ideally will compose and maintain a portfolio of their work throughout the duration of the semester, encouraging students to revise their projects and actively reflect on how they develop as students (and in my case, as writers). Portfolio assessment embraces the values of ungrading, as students are given agency over how their work is perceived and provides them the opportunity to reflect on their own development as a student in your class. If interested, check out the following Portfolio Assessment Instructions document that I have used in my own introductory research writing courses.
For those who are bound to large lecture halls and/or rely on traditional exam practices, the final heading, “How to Ungrade a Midterm or Final Exam,” is an engaging section that shares ways that other instructors have encouraged student collaboration when determining evaluation and account for the fact that people learn and engage with material in a variety of ways, so traditional exam structures may not effectively evaluate the true knowledge and skills of all of our students. An important take away from this section that all instructors should reflect on is how Jonathan Sterne evaluates his students’ study sheets and exams to reflect on and improve his own teaching and assessment practices (242). Just like our students, it is important to partake in metacognition as we reflect on, adapt, and continue to enact participatory and student-center pedagogies.
The New College Classroom is an inspiring text that any teacher, regardless of if they are new or experienced, should read as a resource to encourage active learning and develop pedagogical practices that account for the evolving needs of our students. Chapter 11 “Grades–Ugh!” invites instructors to question their own assessment practices, encouraging teachers across the disciplines to adapt and develop how they and their own students determine the value of coursework. Drawing on case studies from their own classrooms and that of other instructors, Davidson and Katopodis demonstrate that they’ve “seen how a successful classroom is less about teaching and more about learning, especially when every participant has a stake and responsibility in learning together” (xi).
Works Cited
Davidson, Cathy N., and Christina Katopodis. The New College Classroom. Harvard University Press, 2022.
Inoue, Asao. “Labor-Based Grading Resources.” Asao B. Inoue’s Infrequent Words, Blogger, https://asaobinoue.blogspot.com/p/labor-based-grading-contract-resources.html, accessed 10 May, 2023.