Our approach to grading

June 10, 2023

To my wonderful students:

One of the things that I value most in this world is authenticity. This class is no different. It is my greatest wish that each of you will show up to this class with your authentic selves and the only way I can ask that of you is to do the same. So here goes true, authentic, vulnerability.

I have broken from the traditional grading system that I have been a part of either as a student or teacher, my entire academic career, which is lengthier than I might wish to admit. This course will be run as an “ungraded” class. This is very new to most people and many people ask why I run my classroom this way. My simple answer is that I truly believe with every fiber in my being that this is the absolute best way to support you, both as humans and as my students. I have been reading, listening, and processing concepts related to assessment, equity, learning styles, and general best teaching practices for quite some time now and have concluded that I cannot in good conscious keep teaching in the standard method. 

Unlike other classes that you may have had, this class is going to be OUR class. We will build it together and you will be personally involved in every piece of the process and that includes grading. I continue to grow, realizing mistakes are a part of growth, as an educator through my interactions and experiences with you. I invite each of you to do the same.

Sincerely,

Jamey Cooper

Let's be honest...Most of you won't remember what I teach you!

However, the topic really doesn't matter to learning. It's the PROCESS that matters. What I am most interested in you learning is how to be good thinkers and problem solvers. This requires that you struggle and fight with the material not just look for the right answer. It's the perseverance through the challenges that will help build your brains into ones that are resilient! This is what I want for each of you. No matter what your future life or job look like, your ability to think through how to solve problems is what will allow you to make great contributions to this world.

Growth Mindset

The work we do in this class is meant to help support ongoing learning and a growth mindset. Feedback will be provided at various stages along the way to help you improve and each submission will get credit as long as you give it your full effort. This means that during this class you will:

• Focus on understanding and learning, not on your mistakes.

• Work for yourself, not for me.

• Take risks and challenge yourself, not play it safe.

• Use feedback to learn and grow, not be penalized

What this should mean on a practical level is that the typical stress level associated with trying to "get it all right" shouldn't be present in this class. If you ever feel stressed out by this class, then please come to me right away so that we can identify what the challenge you are facing is and work together to create a solution.

The Details

Each of you will complete an ePortfolio that will be the basis for your final grade. Since what that will look like is different for each of you, I will meet with each of you individually several times throughout the semester in order to identify what goals you are striving for, how you are progressing on your goals, and what I can do to help you reach them.

All my courses are focused on learning and not on grades. I am required to give you a grade at the end of the course, but the day to day work will not receive a grade. Rather, I will be providing feedback in the form of comments and questions that are meant to engage and grow your work. There will also be peer interaction and feedback as well as personal reflection on your own work. The goal here is to provide an environment that excites you in the learning while removing the stress and the focus on the grade. Should you be uncomfortable with this process, that is to be expected. This is new and different. However, if you find this process creating more anxiety than it alleviates, please come and talk with me at any point. If you are worried about your grade, your best strategy is to participate, build your labs, and complete the assignments. If an assignment does not feel productive, I am always willing to find ways to adapt the assignment that better suits your personal needs.

Each class will have the specifics of what will be expected for their own projects.

Feedback in class for all the various individual pieces will be run using a complete/incomplete system. When you look in Canvas, you will see 1 of 3 marks given for each assignment:

While I do everything I can to be aware that you all have lives that things that impact your ability to complete work in this class, my personal experience and reflections from students have shown me that I need to implement hard deadlines to help support students become more successful in my class. In an effort to provide that support, I will implement the following pattern for deadlines:

You made our class a safe place to express opinions and ideas, to ask questions, and a safe place to disagree. The ungrading system removed so much stress for me and made me feel free and I worked just as hard as if it were a regularly graded class. -MS

Quite surprisingly, this class represented what other classes simply could not. A safe space where I could be myself, where I could actually have meaningful interactions with others. The reason behind this is the fact that we were more relaxed, and thus, more focused on the material. This was the first instance where I came to realize that worrying about grades isn't going to help me learn. I figured that I am able to learn more if a dumb number/category isn't in the way. -FD

"...[you] put the effort in to make us feel like we had more value than a percentage or a letter in Canvas, and that our creativity was not something we had to shy away from in order to learn." –MH

I feel that this class really helped me grow as a student. Before this class I never thought I was going to be able to teach a lesson or understand earth science but I did. 

In my case it helped me relax and just focus on meeting deadlines rather than on whether or not I was getting an A on any given assignment. It did not affect how I work in a class and the effort I put forth.