In this episode, listen to Drs. Kate Owens from the Math department, Ashley Pagnotta from Physics, and Jenn Wilhelm from Psychology discuss their alternative grading strategies. In this part, Jenn gives insight on her use of "ungrading" to improve student learning.
Resources mentioned:
In this episode, listen to Drs. Kate Owens from the Math department, Ashley Pagnotta from Physics, and Jenn Wilhelm from Psychology discuss their alternative grading strategies. In this part, Jenn gives insight on her use of "ungrading" to improve student learning.
Resources mentioned:
(Narrator) Hi, and welcome to Impactful Teaching at the College of Charleston. A teaching and learning podcast where we discover innovative strategies and practices to engage learners, celebrate the successes of others, making an impact, on today's students academic achievement and inspire each other to learn and grow in our own teaching practices.
(Mendi) Hello and welcome to episode five, part two. I'm your host, Mendi Benigni and instructional technologists at the College of Charleston. And we're going to continue our talk with Drs. Kate Owens from the math department. Ashley Agnatha from physics, and Dr. Jenn Wilhelm from psychology. And in this part, we're going to hear from Dr. Wilhelm about how she has implemented "ungrading" as her primary grading method in some of her classes. Jenn, would you mind introducing yourself again?
(Dr. Wilhelm) Hi, I'm Jenn Wilhelm. I am an Associate Professor and Director of exponential learning for the Department of Psychology. I also have faculty affiliations with the programs of neuroscience, women and gender studies and medical humanities. And I came in 2012, to the College of Charleston.
(Mendi) So Jenn, can you tell us a little bit about ungrading? What does ungrading mean in general and, in specific, what does it mean to you?
(Dr. Wilhelm) Yeah. So the first time I heard ungraded, honestly, I kinda bristles at it because I didn't understand that it's not as simple as just removing grades. It is not "not grading". So I think a lot of people think of when you're upgrading is "What? Like I have to file grades. How do I give students assessments if I don't give them grades?" And upon deeper reflection ungrading is really just an umbrella term for any assessment that is trying to de-center the action of the instructor for assigning a grade to a student on their work. And trying to really flip that narrative to getting students to own their education, to own the process of learning, and to take responsibility so that it's not an instructor creating a situation where it's a "here's an assessment, we'll see how you do. I will give you this grade and tell you how you did." But really to get students to be more participatory in their learning process. And there are lots of different ways to do ungrading. Generally, instructors are going to do some type of assessment in their classes that are going to be based on providing students with formative rather than summative feedback. So you're going to have, like in my classes, I give assignments where I ask students to read something, to write something, to do an experiment even. Then, the assessment is them reflecting on their experience, not just nasal-gazing, but for them to truly think about what did they do? What was the process they went through? What is the scientific method they engaged in? What is the outcome? Was this something that they expected or didn't expect? And really this is what we do as practicing academics. We read something, we think about it, we reflect on it. We think about our ideas on it, and then we might talk to other people about it. So I get my students to talk to their peers. They get peer evaluation. And then they come and they have some type of products they put out that we are able to have a conversation about. And it's a dialogue. And it really takes that emphasis off the external motivator and working for a grade versus, it tries to really move that to an intrinsic motivation, wanting to learn and really focusing on feedback and reflection. And I tend to have students kind of spending more time on the process of learning versus the completion of tasks. Maybe.
(Mendi) What, what sort of triggered you to say, "I need to make a change here. This giving my A's, B's and C's isn't really working out the way I wanted."
(Dr. Wilhelm) So very similarly to what I think Kate and Ashley were talking about earlier is that I felt that there were times in which students grades in my class didn't reflect what I thought that they truly knew. That my grades, I didn't feel like really, were sorting students or giving them information about how they actually understood the material. I also had situations in which a student would come in, would not know a concept or be able to perform at a certain time based on my schedule that I created on my syllabus. But maybe would pick it up a week, two weeks, five weeks later. And at that point, based on our traditional grading structure, that I've been using, it was almost too late for that to be really assessed. Their grade on that assignment had failed them or they had not earn those points at that time. But really realistically they understood the material. And if we're in the business of educating, education and academics is a process of thinking of something, trying it, failing and starting again. And that's the process of learning is trying something out until we get to a point where we think we're getting close to the truth, whatever truth is, and then still finding out that we're wrong and keeping on trying. So if we want to really have a process of learning, we need to honor that process. And not just look at the assessment of some random time point on some, some assessment that we came up with. So I started moving into using more authentic assignments, having a lot more feedback, thinking about ways to focus on the process. And I tried different techniques including standards and specification based grading, which I still used in some methods. So e.g. I will provide specifications for assignments. So students might come in and they have a paper to write and I will give them specifications for that paper. So they have something that they are targeting. We have learning goals, we have outcomes. But then the assessment work and that is going to be met with their reflections on it. There's their evaluations, conversations with me, as well as iterative drafts they might do to be able to go back and correct that work. And what I've found is I've moved into this is actually a model that for at least some of my classes, especially my upper-level neuroscience classes, really models better the academic life. So especially in my upper level neuroscience lab class, we want to have the students come in and I want them to model what it's like to be a neuroscientist, still in their students capacity. If I'm just assigning the papers and giving them a grade, that's not really realistic for our professional life or is not a good model. In fact, in most scientists, we do an experiment. We find out we're wrong. We try it again. We make mistakes. We go through these processes until we come out with something that we're like, Hey, this is a cool interesting finding. And then we don't turn it in for a grade. We go and we talk to our colleagues, we get peer feedback, we go when we talk about it in the conferences. We submitted to a journal, but they don't give us a grade either. Instead, they gave us peer feedback and ask us to revise and resubmit, and then eventually it gets published. But at no point in my professional career does anyone say, "Nope, that's a C paper." Think about like how to move our students into more professional work, real work-related model. I think even if they're not going into neuroscience, they can appreciate that this has an iterative effect; they're going to have it in whatever profession they go into.
(Mendi) That's awesome because really it is really any profession they go into. I mean, even in my job which has zero to do with neuroscience, I might write something up and run it by my colleagues before it gets sent out. Or I'll think that this is gonna be the best way to do something. I'll run it by them. So I really like what you're saying there about how you're using that. Can you give an example of maybe an assignment or something that you do specifically in your class that illustrates this process? Sure, so my neuroscience lab class, I think, is probably the best example of the easiest to follow.
(Dr. Wilhelm) So for this class, we are doing two big projects. It's a group independent studies. So they work together in small groups to design an experiment. Then the ultimate products that they're gonna be producing is going to be some type of paper. It's a traditional APA formatted research paper. And what we'll do along the way is, instead of saying, Okay here, you need to come up with your drafts and I'll give you I'll give you feedback on that or I'll give you grades on the drafts, we're doing a little bit more in-depth feedback. So the students will do very small steps along the way. So they might come up with their hypotheses. They have a conversation, we might have a group discussion in class about is this a good hypothesis and seconds to experimental model, they'll write their reflections and that's going to go into a portfolio that they're going to turn in. So it's kind of documents of work that can be used to show what they have done. We can go through if something that they're doing isn't working, we just go back to it and they can then revise it. They don't get grades along the way. So none of this work is graded until the very end of the semester. And not that it's not they're not being "graded", they're getting plenty of feedback along the way, but there is not a traditional A, B, C, D assigned to that work. So it's all about the process of them going through writing the paper, getting feedback. Sometimes the feedback is from me, sometimes it's from a peer, sometimes it's themself reassessing, sometimes it's done in class, so we'll have a class conversation. So it's not that I'm reading 55 drafts of the same paper from the same student and all of a sudden increasing my workload. But it's being very intentional about providing formative feedback along the way so that students can figure out how they're meeting the specifications that we put together for this paper. Then of course, the institution does require that I post grades. So what we do is we look at the very final product, then the students assess the process that they have gone through. They talk about the process of them learning, making mistakes. Some of them didn't, some of them are really good. They'll get it the first draft because students come in at different points and we can honor the students who come in very well prepared and come out with the outcome "x" and the students who came in less prepared, but still made it to outcome "x". They can end up with the same grade even if they have taken longer to get to that outcome. So at the end of the semester, we use a rubric that we've designed as a course or as a class, to try to align the performance on that, on that paper. Basically, how well did they meet the specifications for the paper? How well does the end product fits what we were supposed to be doing? And we turn that into their course grade, which really probably aligns with professional standards better because whenever I'd submit a paper for publication, I get peer review and eventually at some point that editor has to make a decision. Yes, it's gonna go in or no, it's not. So that's kinda how I how I do it through maybe what paper writing process.
(Mendi) As a class, do you guys create one rubric overall or do they create the rubric for each or the contract, whatever it is, whatever you'd like to call it, for each assignment, how is that handled?
(Dr. Wilhelm) So I'm still in the process of tinkering with this class. I think that originally I had them only make the end of the semester rubric. And I think it's a great idea to have them make some of the smaller ones along the way. Having them come up with a specification for what a paper might need to be, could be a really interesting project. So maybe I write the specifications for the first paper, and then for the second paper, they come together and write the specifications of what they think it should be.
(Mendi) So that's a learning process in and of itself, right?
(Dr. Wilhelm) Yeah. So I think that that's the wonderful process that Ashley and Kate and I have been talking about is that this assessment doesn't have to be, "okay I have now implemented this one design. Here's how it's done, and it's only done this way." You can add your own flavor to it. You can find, look, that's right for you, for your students, for the course level that you're working at. Your own personality.
(narrator) You're listening to impactful teaching. We'll be back in just a few minutes to bring you the rest of today's episode. If you miss any of today's episode, you can hear it again on our website at tlt.cofc.edu That's tlt.cofc.edu
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(narrator) Once again, here's impactful teaching.
(Mendi, host) So how are your students taking to this? What are they thinking about this?
(Dr. Wilhelm) So I've been through this in several different iterations. And it kinda depends obviously on their backgrounds. So my classes tend to bring in students from both the Humanities and Social Sciences as well as School of Science and Math, and sometimes from another school on campus outside of one of those two. And it kinda depends on which experiences they've had in previous courses with grading. Students that come in and they have very well aligned themselves with performing in a traditional grading background. Come into my class and have a little bit of stress. Sometimes they'll say, Oh, this sounds good. But you can see that anxiety and they'll have lots of conversations with me about what does this really going to be? What do you mean I'm not getting grades along the way? Is this going to impact my ability to go to medical school? I've had that conversation, but really trying to take time. So I take time, the very beginning of class. And then multiple times throughout the class, we have conversations about how, how they're being assessed and how they're getting this feedback. So it's not a onetime conversation of, here's the syllabus, here's how you're doing graded, done. It's a constant communication with students about, here's how you're doing in the class. Here's what I think your strengths are, here's what I think you can work on more. Then really, as we go through that process, I think we start to get a lot more buy-in, especially when I talked to them about those soft skills that are really building that will be applicable to a real-world situation into their future relationships. That I think once they understand that that's really something that they can see being fulfilled in their future. They really start to get a little bit more excited about it and letting them have some authority in creating the rubrics also gives them power. So they, they realized that they're not just at the whim of the crazy professor who's trying something they've never seen before, but they really seem to feel like they've been empowered to really take control of their class and their performance in the class and ended up coming out feeling, in general, they seem to feel really excited about this opportunity. I think it's really important for us to think critically and reflect on why we do the practices that we have. Why are we using a traditional grading style? I actually use traditional grading in one of my classes because it fits that class appropriately than ungrading, and maybe I will change it up in the future, but it doesn't have to be an all or nothing experience. And we do need to reflect on what makes our students best prepared and what we can do as instructors to really provide them with the resources to be able to learn to meet their own goals.
(Mendi) Are you happy you've changed?
(Dr. Wilhelm) I've very happy that I changed. I think, like Kate and Ashley said, I don't have to make those fine distinctions of how much credit is this worth? Is this paper, uh, B paper, or is it a C paper, or is it an A paper? And all I really know that students tried, but they're really not up to the standard, but they really tried. So what can I do? I need to change my grading. I don't have those conversations with myself anymore. I'm able to actually very quickly go through, provide what I feel is helpful feedback, having conversations with the students, or more about learning and more about the stuff that I care about. Instead of, Hey, I got a 50 on this paper, what do I do? So it's made my time with the students a lot more enjoyable, my relationships with them a lot stronger, and that increases my attitude and my happiness by a lot. (Mendi) Yeah. Ashley, I see you nodding.
(Dr. Pagnotta) Yeah. I agree that it definitely increases the relationships with the students. And it is, I'm sure you run into this as well (Jenn), it's confusing in the beginning. They are kind of like Kate mentioned, they are happy when they hear that they can retest as much as they need to for my class. And I'm sure they're happy with the idea of being able to have the control, like a lot more control over their grades in the upgrading system. When it comes down to the actual like, "Wait, how do I actually do this?" and "how do I actually figure out what my grade is?" it is a little confusing at first. But once they get that, especially once they do their first reassessment or once they come to office hours and are like, I'm sorry, I did not understand this in class, and we go through it and they're like, "oh, cool, okay, now I get it". They'll come to office hours to make sure they understand the concept and then do a reassessment. I don't know. I feel like I know my students, especially because I've fairly big classes. I have about 48 students. And so it's nice to have a bit more of a connection with most of them.
(Dr. Wilhelm) Ashley, you hit on something that I get asked a lot is, "oh, you know, what you're talking about is great, but this isn't scalable. I have 100-150 students in my class. I can never do this." I think that as we're talking, I think that it's something that is really scalable. Either of these designs is something that can be done at any size class. Especially with ungrading where I'm relying a lot more on student self-reflections and peer evaluations. And while the students are doing multiple drafts, there are techniques and methods you can use to reduce your overall grading burden, and make this something that you can really use with a lot of different students or classes or different sizes. The consequences I have seen is that office hours are busy. But I'm having good conversations. Our students are coming to see me and they see me as a human. They don't see me as somebody who's doling out a grade, but we have a conversation about real stuff and I really enjoyed that consequence.
(Dr. Pagnotta) Yeah, there definitely are ways to scale these methods. I like to do reassessment where they come to my office hours or come to extra ones they can sign up for if the timing doesn't work. But I know that some other folks at the college, even at least one other person at the college who's using this grading system. And definitely folks, what other institutions are doing, kind of like what Mendi mentioned way back in the beginning about having reassessment's through our LMS where there's a question pool. And in that case, you don't have to have an actual meeting with the student. That's not what I prefer because I do like to actually talk to them and have them be able to ask questions and all that kinda stuff. But it can absolutely be done automated. If you had a much larger class, you can absolutely take advantage of the technology to do that kind of thing.
(Dr. Wilhelm) I also really like the use of technology for making this scalable. So that was something that I had not really thought a ton about. But in terms of making this a doable way of upgrading and giving all this feedback, technology has really helped. So instead of using a pink or red pen or a purple pen, like you said, Ashley, I don't use a pen at all. So I do most of my feedback orally. And I can sit and read a paper and have Zoom on or one of the other video capturing systems where a paper can be up and I read and I comment as I'm reading a student's work and able to give them oral feedback. And students have commented that they really appreciate that because they don't misunderstand my tone. They don't think I'm mad at them for making a mistake. Oh, you seem like you're totally cool, but that happened. And not that I'm okay with mistakes but it's easier for them to hear the tone of voice on which it was said. It also keeps them from having to read my handwriting, which can get really bad after awhile. I also will post common comments. So I'll post a Google sheet that has some of the common comments that I make so students can read through those. So here's some things I noticed that you all have struggled with. And I can also, sometimes I'll highlight those in my videos and sometimes I'll say, I'll just kinda hit the things that I know the students struggled with and say, "Hey, go read these comments over here as well that people have been struggling with." And then students can leave feedback using the same video software tools so they can use something like flip(grid) or whatever. And it allows them to do this asynchronous and we're not taking up class time to always do these feedback. And that can make it where you can get some pretty good feedback in three or four minutes just speaking, instead of having to take hours of just writing, although there's utility in that too.
(Mendi) That's awesome. So as we close out here, Jenn, um, what advice would you give to someone who might want to try this method in their courses, upgrading in their courses.
(Dr. Wilhelm) So don't be scared. We have all been institutionalized, as academics. We have made it through the traditional grading system and probably found some some worth and don't be scared to try to shed some of that. You don't have to just go and turn your whole class into an upgrading experience. You probably ungrade already. So you're probably already giving students feedback. It's pretty easy to adopt that into a class, even at a large scale. Having an assignment or two where you're able to provide it formative feedback instead of having everything be summative. And this little steps can end up leading to large transformations in your class if that's what you choose, or it can just be little bits and pieces that you add, you add. So don't be scared. You can try it and if it doesn't go well, you can always keep trying it. And that's showing modeling failure and resiliency is a really incredible gift we can give to our students. Showing them it's okay to make mistakes. And here's how you pick yourself back up so don't be scared to do it.
(Mendi)How about you, Kate?
(Dr. Owens) You just have to make small changes. How can I incorporate one or two of these ideas in my class next semester and then just try it out and it's okay if it doesn't work, right, It's okay. We've gotta kinda like iterate here to find a system that will work for you. For me, I've been doing this for seven years. It took me many semesters to figure out what works well for me and my students in my classroom. So you just need to have some grace. It doesn't have to be the perfect system the first time you try it. You just want it to be slightly better than what you're doing now.
(Mendi) And Ashley, would you agree?
(Dr. Pagnotta) Yeah, absolutely. I think that it is not gonna be perfect the first time. There is a growing community of people who are doing competency-based grading. If you can connect with them and get input on a syllabus to start with a set of standards for your class that's somebody else's developed that you can start with and refine, and then just give it a try. You will continue to make it better as you keep doing it. And that's, that is why I started with a standards-based testing where only part of their grade, it is the vast majority of their grade, 70% at this point comes from their performance on the standards. Maybe someday I'll switch over to 100% standard space. But for me, this was definitely the way that I could start with it. It was what I could handle at the time. And it turns out I actually really like it.
(Mendi)Thank you. So it seems like from all three of you, our takeaways are start small, just add little pieces, and this is not an all-or-nothing kinda thing. You can Upgrade in class A, you can competency grade in class B, and you can traditionally grading class C. So, it's whatever is going to work best for the class and the subject matter. I really want to thank you guys so, so much for taking the time today. I really, really appreciate you guys and the things that you're doing on campus. So thank you guys and have a great day.
(Narrator) Thank you for listening to Impactful Teaching brought to you by the Teaching and Learning Team at the College of Charleston. Until next time.