I Hate Grading. So I Stopped. (Sort of.)

By: Rita Shah, Associate Professor of Criminology on August 29th, 2022

I hate grading. I probably shouldn’t say that out loud, but it’s true. I hate grading. It’s the part of our job I dislike the most. And, if conversations with others in academia are any indication, I’m not alone.

Except, that’s not entirely accurate. I enjoy reading student work. I enjoy seeing how their work improves with each draft and how understandings and applications of concepts grow. It’s not the process of grading that I hate. It’s part that comes after. The part that requires judgement.

On the surface, grades are supposed to be a neutral way of helping students understand their progress in grasping the material. In practice, we know they are not. We all have stories of the student who is deflated and gives up after a receiving an F or otherwise earned a grade below their expectations—even though failure (or, at least, not doing as well as desired) is often a part of the learning process. We all have stories of students who are happy to get their C and move on, and stories of students whose mental well-being relies on earning that A+.

But we also have stories about us. We all have stories at being frustrated that students don’t read or incorporate our comments or about the student we encourage to re-do their assignment and raise their grade and being discouraged when they didn’t. And we all have stories of the late nights grading wondering why we do more than the easiest of assessments that would save us time and energy. (On the flip side, we also likely all have stories of sometimes choosing to do the easiest of assessments because doing more feels like a waste of our time and energy.)

So, no, I do not hate the process of grading. I hate the way students (and we) view grading. I hate the tension grading can create between instructors and students. In other words, what I really hate is the effect of grading.

That is why, when at the end of 2020 I heard about a Twitter-based book club reading Susan Blum’s edited collection UnGrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead), I jumped at the chance to join.

It was in that book club that the notion of ungrading clicked: The goal of removing grades is not necessarily to eliminate grades altogether (though that is the route many of us take), particularly given the requirement most of us face to submit a final grade; rather, the goal is to change the relationship with grades, so that students focus on the formative aspects of the grading process and not just the letter or number they receive.

For me, accomplishing this reframing involved fully ungrading my MA level courses. Doing so the first time required adjusting my existing assignments and incorporating new ones. Doing so the second time led me to develop a semester-long project-based assignment that allowed students in my Qualitative Methods course to comprehend the basics of qualitative studies and develop skills to critique others’ studies. (I have been invited to write a book chapter on ungrading my MA-level courses and will be happy to share it once it is published.) Student feedback in both classes highlights that the ungrading approach helped them focus more on the class content and skill building and stress less on the numbers and letters. (I do intend to ungrade my undergraduate courses, but am holding off for reasons that, honestly, probably deserve its own write-up.)

For those of us who have never incorporated gradeless assignments, ungrading can seem daunting at first, but it doesn’t have to be. If you aren’t ready to ungrade, but want to learn more, there are tons of great resources out there. Here are a few:

• Read Susan Blum’s edited collection;

• Join the Discord #ungradinghub to connect with ungraders across institutions and to gather ideas and support;

• Check out #UngradingCon on Saturday, October 15 (you might even see a familiar face).

If you, like me, are ready to try something different, there are lots of little ways to start incorporating ungrading methods into the classroom, none of which require upending your syllabus mid-semester. Two ideas that worked really for me are:

1. Altering how scaffolding assignments are graded: Rather than a traditional grade, each draft earned a complete (C) or incomplete (I). A “C” means they move on to the next part of the paper/project/etc. An “I” means they revise until they get a C (usually only takes one more attempt). By the time you get the final version, students have improved the skill the assignment was intended to build, and you get to see the fruition of their and your hard work in helping them reach the end.

2. Incorporating midterm self-reflections/progress letters: These provide students an opportunity to reflect on their time in the course, where they have excelled, and where they need assistance. You can also add a final letter to help students reflect on the class as a whole and provide an honest reflection of the final grade they think they have earned and why.

Here are some additional ideas:

• Check our David Buck’s Alternative Grading Resources;

• See Starr Sackstein’s Hacking Assessment for a slew of ways to incorporating ungrading;

• Adjust rubric’s to be more content-based than points-based;

• Incorporate contract-based grading and/or peer review (examples include Ch. 7 in Blum’s Ungrading and Inoue’s Labor-Based Grading Contracts).

And, of course, let’s lean on each other! I know I am not the first on our campus to pursue ungrading techniques, and I certainly will not be the last. Last year’s WAC ungrading book club is proof of that. The number and types of brilliant techniques being used on our campus are as varied as we are. So, let’s make sure we ask each other for advice and support, too.