May 29, 2021
I knew social online spaces were important to non-formal teaching development. While most studies focused on Twitter, there were plenty of other spaces where teaching communities thrived such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and even more private social spaces such as Google Groups and Slack channels. I thought I would try to follow individuals as wherever they go in the style of Marcus’ multi-sited ethnography (1995).
Then, reading about teaching development as social practice and praxis led me to recognize what was happening with #ungrading.
In my faculty development work, I had come across the concept of “ungrading” by listening to a Teaching in Higher Ed episode with Jesse Stommel (August 2018). “Ungrading” is the process of eliminating grades to the greatest extent possible in exchange for each other and student feedback, goal-setting, reflection, and self-evaluation. (I will nerd out on the nebulous origin of the term “ungrading” in this context in another post.) This practice is built on the idea that grades place an extrinsic motivator on learning, something humans are already intrinsically motivated to do. As a result, students’ intrinsic motivation is decreased, and course-based learning becomes a fraught process among students and instructor.
There has always been criticism of grading systems in education, even arguing that grades are arbitrary and unnecessary. (The digger you deep, the more you find they are outright oppressive.) From a social learning perspective, particularly community of practice and connectivism, it was when the conversation was brought to Twitter as the #ungrading movement and unified in practice that the idea became more mainstream. The hashtag emerged on Twitter in 2016 with minimal activity. Once three faculty members with large Twitter followings shared that they call this “ungrading” through their blogs’ posts, the popular higher education publications like Inside Higher Education and the Chronicle of Higher Education published a few related pieces by these same faculty members.
In the tweet above, Jesse Stommel shared a piece and said he was working on a longer piece, which he announced about a year and a half later.
The Twitter hashtag #ungrading resulted in faculty sharing individual experiences with #ungrading, talking with one another about #ungrading, sharing ideas and challenges related to the practice in their discipline or institutions, and more. The use of a specific term and hashtag united faculty scattered across the globe interested in re-imagining the teaching and learning exchange meant to take place with grades.
Studying #Ungrading through the lens of community of practice and connectivism, I am observing on Twitter the role of of “newcomers” and “old-timers” (Lave & Wenger, 1991), who and what binds the community together, how faculty demonstrate their “practice” around ungrading, and how a community and network are involved in that practice. Interviews provide a behind-the-scenes understanding of how these spaces work: about teachers’ multiple communities of practice (online and offline), the teaching culture in these communities, and how ungrading fits within these communities. I learn more about how they define their online communities in terms of boundaries, purpose, position, and identity-making. I am exploring how how faculty arrived at their participation in an “ungrading” community of practice, and what connectivist principles helped them find and form this community.
I had decided to focus on #ungrading before there was an #UngradingSlowChat, which eventually evolved to a robust Ungrading Book Club with monthly Zoom meetings and Twitter Chats. I am following this community activity, reading what instructors share about their ungrading journey in blogs, publications, and scholarship, particularly how this journey was taken through networks and with a community of practice.
This evolution only increased my resolve to explore what makes this community thrive and see whether there are lessons to glean for forming more teaching related communities of practice online.
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press.
Marcus, G. (1995). Ethnography in/of the world system: The emergence of multi-sited ethnography. Annual Review of Anthropology, 24, 95-117.
Stommel. (2018 August 9). How to Ungrade. Teaching in higher ed [Audio podcast], Bonni Stachowiak (Host).
Feel free to follow up with me on Twitter or email me at christinamoorephd@gmail.com