Book review

Green, C. A., West, C. and Delahunty, J. (2022) “[Book Review] Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to do Instead), edited by Susan D. Blum”, Teaching and Learning Inquiry, 10. doi: 10.20343/teachlearninqu.10.22. Vol. 10 (2022): Teaching & Learning Inquiry

Bibliography

Blackwelder, Aaron. 2020. “What Going Gradeless Taught Me about Doing the ‘Actual work’.” In Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to do Instead), edited by Susan D. Blum, 42–52. West Virginia University Press.

Blum, Susan D., ed. 2020d. Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead): West Virginia University Press.

Chiaravalli, A. "Teachers Going Gradeless: Toward a Future of Growth Not Grades"

Flaherty, C. (2019) When Grading Less is More. Professors’ reflections on their experiences with ‘ungrading’ spark renewed interest in the student-centered assessment practice.

Gandara, Melinda, and Tara Carter. 2021. “Ungrading and the Freedom to Learn.” International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL21), Perth, WA, October 26–29.

Gannon, K. "How to Escape Grading Jail"

Gibbs, L. "(Un)Grading: It Can Be Done in College"

Gibbs, L. "Ungrading for More/Better Feedback"

Greenlaw, S. "Adventures in Ungrading"

Guberman, Daniel. 2021. “Student Perceptions of an Online Ungraded Course.” Teaching & Learning Inquiry 9 (1): 86–98. https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.9.1.8.

Hall, E. and Meinking, K. . (2022) “Letting Go of Grades: Creating an Environment of Autonomy and a Focus on Learning for High Achieving Students”, Teaching and Learning Inquiry, 10. doi: 10.20343/teachlearninqu.10.21.

Kissel, M "Going Gradeless"

Kohn, A. "From Degrading to De-grading"

Miller, M., D. (2022) 'Ungrading Light: 4 Simple Ways to Ease the Spotlight Off Points'. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Available at: https://www.chronicle.com/article/ungrading-light-4-simple-ways-to-ease-the-spotlight-off-points?cid=gen_sign_in

Mitchell-Buck, H. "Adventures In Ungrading"

Neuhaus, J. "Bibliography: Non-Traditional Grading and 'Ungrading'"

Sackstein, S, Hacking Assessment: 10 Ways to Go Gradeless in a Traditional Grades School

Sorensen-Unruh, C. "Ungrading: A Series"

Sorensen-Unruh, . "Ungrading: What is it and why should we use it?"

Supiano, B. (2019) "Grades Can Hinder Learning. What Should Professors Use Instead?" The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Tobin, T. J. "In the Halls of the King Under the Mountain (of Grading)"

Warner, J. "Continuing Adventures in Ungrading"

Annotated bibliography by Jesse Stommel

Foundations of ungrading

Alfie Kohn "The Case Against Grades"

Kohn's central tenets: "Grades tend to diminish students’ interest in whatever they’re learning"; "Grades create a preference for the easiest possible task"; and "Grades tend to reduce the quality of students’ thinking." His survey of almost 100 years of research is compelling, but his statements of what should be obvious (but isn't) are what makes his work so necessary and vital: "We have to be willing to challenge the conventional wisdom, which in this case means asking not how to improve grades but how to jettison them once and for all."

Peter Elbow "Grading Student Writing: Making It Simpler, Fairer, Clearer"

Peter Elbow "Ranking, Evaluating, Liking: Sorting Out Three Forms of Judgment"

Two things in particular that I find particularly valuable from Elbow: (1) the concept of minimal grading, about which he writes, "I would rather put my effort into trying to figure out which activities will lead to learning than into trying to measure the exact quality of the final product students turn in"; and (2) the notion that "liking" our students' work could be both pleasurable and also an effective pedagogical strategy. Elbow writes, "Good teachers see what is only potentially good, they get a kick out of mere possibility--and they encourage it."

Asao Inoue "A Social Justice Framework for Anti-Racist Writing Assessment: Labor-Based Grading Contracts"

Cathy Davidson "Contract Grading and Peer Review"

Asao Inoue and Cathy Davidson's experiments with contract grading are different in many ways but both of them have helped drive much of my thinking about this approach. My concern about contract grading at its surface is that it runs the risk of centering grades more than decentering them. However, Inoue and Davidson show how the approach can be used to raise critical conversations about what grades are, how they make meaning, and how they can be interrogated in the service of marginalized students. Asao Inoue writes that labor-based grading contracts specifically "avoid many of the harmful and racist consequences of conventional grading ecologies by not using the dominant white discourse as the standard for grades." The link above is to a brief handout that masterfully introduces the work he describes at length in his book, Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies: Teaching and Assessing Writing for a Socially Just Future.

Soraya Chemaly "All Teachers Should Be Trained To Overcome Their Hidden Biases"

This is a relatively short piece, but it's filled with links to research into the problem(s) of bias in education, and also standardized grades. For example, she shares studies that show "teachers spend up to two thirds of their time talking to male students; they also are more likely to interrupt girls but allow boys to talk over them. [...] When teachers ask questions, they direct their gaze towards boys more often, especially when the questions are open-ended." For anyone thinking about ungrading or inclusive pedagogies, I'd recommend opening and reading every single one of Chemaly's links. But I will also warn that some of the studies are more gut-wrenching than others. Grades are not a coincidence. Our systems for assessment reduce students to rows in a spreadsheet, to data points, and strip them of their humanity.

Jeffrey Schinske and Kimberly Tanner "Teaching More by Grading Less (or Differently)"

I often turn to this piece for its account of the history of grades in higher education. Every one of their sentences is packed with detail. They couple incisive commentary with refreshing (well-documented) statements like this one, "It would not be surprising to most faculty members that, rather than stimulating an interest in learning, grades primarily enhance students’ motivation to avoid receiving bad grades." In spite of a rather bleak account of what grades have been and are becoming, the piece ends on an optimistic note, "One wonders how much more student learning might occur if instructors’ time spent grading was used in different ways."

Resources authored by Jesse Stommel

Posts and Articles

Here are my four most recent posts about grades and ungrading, not in the order they were written, but probably in the order they should be read:

Why I Don't Grade;

How to Ungrade;

Ungrading: an FAQ;

If bell hooks Made an LMS: Grades, Radical Openness, and Domain of One's Own.

This is the text of the presentation I gave at the Domains17 conference in Oklahoma City, OK on June 5, 2017. I co-presented with Sean Michael Morris. Here is a link to his half of the presentation. [http://seanmichaelmorris.com/if-bell-hooks-made-an-lms/]

Interviews and Podcasts

Beckie Supiano "Forget Grades and Turnitin. Start Trusting Students."

Overthrowing Education: Why Grades Fail Us

Educator and writer explains the whys and hows of Ungrading. Afterwards, he plays a special edition of Two Truths and a Lie in our 5 Minute Game Show. Then hear middle school teacher Leora Smith’s funny story about the perils of grading as we go In the Trenches. This episode is “sponsored” by Grade…

Why I Don’t Grade with Jesse Stommel - Season 1 Episode 2 — Teachers Going Gradeless

This episode features an interview with Jesse Stommel , Executive Director of the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies at University of Mary Washington.

Arthur ChiaravalliTeachers Going Gradeless

Teaching in Higher Ed, "How to Ungrade"TeachThought Podcast, "Why I Don't Grade"