UnGrading Gen Eds

RadicalLY REinventing Student Assessment

By shifting the focus from numerical driven assessment, students can focus more completely on synthesizing the course material.

Concept

Shifting the focus from the "traditional" grading schema (A, B, C, D, F) to an "un-graded" model, where students and professors access their learning throughout the semester in tandem will:

enable students to be more to have more ownership over their progress and grading
enable students to focus on the content of the course rather than the grade
enable professors to have more meaningful interactions with students

I can't think of a more meaningless, superficial, cynical way to evaluate learning than by assigning a grade.

-Cathy Davidson, Distinguished Professor of English, City University of New York's Graduate Center

Reasoning

Multiple studies have shown that:

grades play to extrinsic (not intrinsic) motivation
obsession over grades decreases enjoyment of learning and increases fears of failure

Jesse Stommel, 2018

Execution

To find if this innovative and synergistic grading concept works for the ODU community we propose the following:

Identify 5 courses within the General Education program which have traditionally high numbers of DFWI rates.
Identify faculty willingness to run a pilot program.
Hold several meetings with those stake holders to see how the "un-grading model" (as illustrated by Jesse Stommel, executive director of the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies at University of Mary Washington)
Implement the Un-Grading Pilot Program in Fall 2021.

Measurements of Success

At the end of the Fall 2021 semester, we will assess the success of the program, and determine whether it should be implemented in more courses.

Assessment should include:

Measure beliefs of "traditionally" graded classes, to determine if there is an increase in the number of students who perform better.
Qualitative data from both the students and the professors in a series of focus groups to find how the program is working on the ground level.
Compare ungraded student success levels to traditionally-graded courses.
- compare student recall of course material.
- measure differences of student course comprehension.
Measure student satisfaction with the ungrading process.
- compare levels of student self-efficacy between class modalities.

Ungrading resources

- Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead), Susan Blum (book)
- Ungrading, Susan D. Blum
- The Case Against Grades, Alfie Kohn
- Ungrading Pedagogy, Christopher Philips
- What If We Didn't Grade?: Ungrading - A Bibliography, Jesse Stommel
- Ungrading: What's the Hype?, Amy Byron

If the pilot program is found to be successful, we can implement this idea on a larger scale...and create a radical, student-focused educational system through Innovate Monarchs.

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