SCHOOL AFFILIATION: Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences
EMAIL: ljanssen@uw.edu
Assessing student writing, consciously or unconsciously, can often privilege students who are white, from higher-income backgrounds, and/or native English speakers. I have also found that it can lack transparency for students (i.e., when their work is assessed by an instructor’s gauge of writing “quality”). I’ve found that moving toward “labor-based grading” (the term I use for specifications grading in my courses) rewards student effort, engagement, and therefore learning, rather than specific skill sets that some students come in with.
As I continue to learn, I constantly rework the ways I apply specifications grading in my courses. Some strategies I have found valuable in composition courses include:
All assignments worth points (including all essay drafts)—more or fewer points depending on the amount of labor expected. If students meet all criteria outlined on assignment prompts and discussed/practiced in class, they receive full points.
No limit on resubmissions if full points are not achieved.
Multiple, specified means to achieve full points for both in-class participation and group work.
I have learned that specifications grading is not necessarily more laborious than traditional grading, though it can be. (For example, I have tried to implement grading contracts, co-created with students, but have found the labor distracting from core course learning objectives for both students and myself. However, this is also an example of where I hope to learn even more from colleagues’ experiences and successes.) I have learned that investment in (and research around) alternative grading is thriving in fields beyond my own—and I hope to learn/share even more across disciplines to create more transparent and consistent grading experiences for students.
Asao Inoue & Mya Poe’s “How to Stop Harming Students: An Ecological Guide to Antiracist Writing Assessment”