Ungrading: when and how I don't grade
Вставка
- Опубліковано 26 лип 2024
- I created this video for a York University Teaching Commons Blog Post. You can find the accompanying post here: www.yorku.ca/teachingcommons/...
A written version of this video, with a few edits and additions: / ungrading-when-and-how...
Shortform is a book summary app with excellent summaries and exercises for books on education like Carol Dweck's "Mindset." You can support my channel by purchasing a Shortform subscription using my affiliate link. It also gets you 20% off an annual subscription: www.shortform.com/morganeua
✨TIMESTAMPS✨
0:00 - the problem with grades
3:42 - what is "ungrading"?
5:32 - the current situation
6:23 - problem: grades are vague
7:50 - solution: collaborative rubrics, minimal grading
9:50 - problem: grades cause fear of failure
11:56 - solution: grade-free zones, contract grading
14:06 - problem: grades promote competition
15:00 - solution: peer-assessment, resist grading curves
17:59 - problem: grades reduce student reception of feedback
18:33 - solution: self- and collaborative grading
21:41 - conclusion
✨WORKS CITED✨
Bee, Zoe. “Grading is a Scam (and Motivation is a Myth) | A Professor Explains.” UA-cam, May 2021. Accessed: 5 Dec 2022.
Bloom, B. S. “Learning for Mastery.” Instruction and Curriculum. Topical Papers and Reprints, no. 1, 1968.
Blum, Susan, ed. Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead), West Virginia University Press, 2020.
Butler, Ruth. “Enhancing and undermining intrinsic motivation: The effects of task‐involving and ego‐involving evaluation on interest and performance.” British Journal of Educational Psychology, vol. , 58, no. 1, pp. 1-14, 1988.
Double, Kit S., Joshua A. McGrane, Therese N. Hopfenbeck. “The Impact of Peer-Assessment on Academic Performance: A Meta-Analysis of Control Group Studies.” Educational Psychology Review, vol. 32, pp. 481-509, 2019.
Edwards, Nelta M. “Student Self-Grading in Social Statistics.” College Teaching, vol. 55, no. 2, pp. 72-76, 2007.
Elbow, Peter. “Grading Student Writing: Making It Simpler, Fairer, Clearer.” New Directions for Teaching and Learning, no. 69, pp. 127-140 1997.
Granger, Ruby. “grades are stopping us from learning.” UA-cam, Oct 2022.
Accessed 5 Dec 2022.
Harter, Susan. “Pleasure Derived from Challenge and the Effects of Receiving Grades on Children’s Difficulty Level Choices.” Child Development, vol. 49, pp. 788-799, 1978.
Inoue, Asao B. “Labor-Based Grading Resources.” Asao B. Inoue's Infrequent Words, tinyurl.com/LaborBasedGrading. Accessed 8 Dec 2022.
Jackson, Mariah, and Leah Marks. “Improving the effectiveness of feedback by use of assessed reflections and withholding of grades.” Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education. Vol. 41, No. 4, pp. 532-547, 2016.
Kilgour, et al. “A plan for the co-construction and collaborative use of rubrics for student learning.” Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, vol. 45, no. 1, pp. 140-153, 2020.
Kohn, Alfie. Punished by Rewards: the trouble with gold stars, incentive plans, A's, praise, and other bribes. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1993.
Nicholls, John G. “Achievement motivation: Conceptions of ability, subjective experience, task choice, and performance.” Psychological Review, vol. 91, no. 3, pp. 328-346, 1984.
Pulfrey, Caroline, Celine Buchs, and Fabrizio Butera. “Why Grades Engender Performance-Avoidance Goals: The Mediating Role of Autonomous Motivation.” Journal of Educational Psychology, vol. 103, no. 3, pp. 683-700, 2011.
Schinske, Jeffrey and Kimberly Tanner. “Teaching More by Grading Less (or Differently).” CBE - Life Sciences Education, vol. 13, pp. 159-166, 2014.
Stommel, Jesse. “How to Ungrade.” Jesse Stommel, 2018, www.jessestommel.com/how-to-u.... Accessed 8 Dec 2022.
Strong, et al. “Self-Grading in Large General Education Classes: A Case Study.” College Teaching, vol. 52, no. 2, pp. 52-57, 2004.
Taras M. “The use of tutor feedback and student self-assessment in summative assessment tasks: Towards transparency for students and for tutors.” Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 26, pp. 605-614, 2001.
Walden, R.C. “Why I Don't Care About Grades Anymore.” UA-cam, May 2018. Accessed: 5 Dec 2022.
Young, Sue Fostaty, Robert J. Wilson. Assessment and Learning: The ICE Approach, Portage and Main Press, 2000.
I really appreciate this video. I’m a STEM PhD student and last semester TA’d for the first time. Throughout the course, we had activities to dive deeper into the subject and engage with it another way. Notably, these were hands-on, often collaborative activities that aren’t common in STEM classes (presentations, debates, writing, reflections on media). As a huge nerd about the subject, I LOVED these activities because they gave me the opportunity to share my passion and hopefully encourage curiosity and engagement about it.
Something I was really surprised by is that at the end of the semester, there were quite a few negative evaluations about these activities. They were seen as a waste of time because they didn’t directly contribute to the tests. Notably, this is a pretty prestigious university and the students have generally been “A students” their whole life.
I see so many of the issues with grades in just this one semester. If I’m ever an instructor of record, I hope to incorporate some of these principles to encourage curiosity, eagerness to learn, and willingness to grow- including accepting failure. I think in my situation a mastery model or grading based on improvement would better achieve these goals that conventional grading.
Thanks so much for the video, gives me a lot to think about!
In high school I had a physics class that was "ungraded" under what seems to me the contract grading paradigm. We received all our assignments on day one, could complete them on our own schedule, repeat as many times until we achieved mastery, and once we had accumulated the amount of points we wanted we were free to stop/use class time as we saw fit. While we didn't collaborate on what would count as enough work for an A or a B, we did have a lot of control + clear expectations from day one.
Again in college I had one "ungraded" class, this time a humanities course. Our papers came back with feedback rather than grades, and we focus on self-identified learning outcomes. Of course we ultimately received grades, but they felt secondary to the actual learning and growth taking place.
These two classes taught me how to learn and synthesize knowledge better than any others. Ungrading is so powerful, and I didn't know it had a name until just now, watching your video. I appreciate the work you're doing. As I'm sure you've seen in many ways already, it makes a huge difference. Thank you!
Very cool! Thank you for sharing!
I never comment on videos, but after watching your video on zettelkasten and seeing you're a theater teacher and student like me, i had to check this video out. I sort of subscribe to this theory of grading in the first place but haven't really fleshed out how to do it with my classes. I took so many notes here (in Obsidian!) and can't wait to implement some of these ideas with my classes.
Thank you.
Hey, that's great! I hope it works out :)
I never had an ungraded class, except maybe one or two pass/fail type things. It colored my experience, but it had the biggest effect in classes that I was less interested in or had less competence in. In a class where I felt comfortable with the professor and the material, I would take risks and try things. But, I see the point, we should be able to do that in all our classes, not just our major-field classes with our favorite profs.
Interesting stuff to think about.
Fantastic video! I am an undergrad and have excelled in my music program in part because most of our assignments are project based. It is understood that if I simply turn in my project on time and it hits the criteria then its an A. I am able to discuss my grade with my instructor based on my personal progress. This gives me more space to take risks and I am focused on my progress as a musician as opposed to the end grade. Courses where answers are either right or wrong, such as STEM courses, are disastrous to my mental health. I enjoy learning but the rigid grading in STEM actively pushes me away. Now that I am exploring electronic music I have rediscovered my interests in engineering, electricity, analog and digital technology, history of communications tech, more STEM related without the anxiety because with music it is all about play, about exploring and experimenting, not an equation with a right or wrong answer to be graded on.
15:08 Good god. A policy of mandated grade curving sounds like a nightmare. Glad I haven't had to do that...
I did a bachelors and masters program with a competency based pass / fail, and I could retake up to twice if needed. This was amazing for my mental health as I had already withdrew from another school.
Some additional thoughts:
- I just recently learned of St. Johns College "Don Rag" where the college has a council of teachers provide direct feedback to the student instead of grades.
- Financial status of the student, stressing about scholarships that depend on grades provides a perverse incentive to pay more attention to grades.
Direct feedback definitely makes more sense to me. And I've heard of entire high schools that only assign feedback rather than grades, so when the students apply to university they apply with a letter from their school that explains the situation. And then the students prove they deserve to attend the university through things like reference letters, personal statements, interviews, etc. instead of a simple transcript. Which also makes more sense to me, considering it sounds as though different high schools have different levels of grade inflation, so they're not exactly objective or accurate representations of a student's abilities.
There are also many other reasons a student might not have a transcript when entering university (I've heard of refugees, for instance, who cannot access their transcript from their original institution), so it might be unfair to rely on grades for entrance. And even if you can enter, not having grades leaves you out of scholarship competitions, as you say. So, again, even if they get in because they deserve to be there, they might have to drop out because of financial restrictions resulting from our reliance on grades.
I'd be fascinated to hear more about your education, was the bachelor's pass/fail for each course? Amazing that you got multiple tries!
Proud ungrader here! I really like the model you describe here of giving students the option to self-assess or defer to you, since that does what I think the best alternative grading systems do: shift the power back to the students and allow them some say in how they're evaluated. Contract grading does this, too (which, btw, check out the hybrid contract that Peter Elbow describes, since I feel like it might address some of the concerns that you voiced over Inoue's labor-based model), as does something like the specifications grading that Linda Nilson writes about.
I teach writing and use a system that falls somewhere between a labor-based and specifications-based model, where grades are determined based on how much work students do on a given project (how many pages they wrote, how many sources they cited, etc.). Students have a better idea of what they need to do, and if they do miss the mark for whatever reason, I'm immediately inviting them to revise and resubmit. Since I moved away from conventional grades, I've felt much more like I'm actually teaching writing instead of just writing explanations for grades.
8:50 This is my thinking about giving detailed rubrics. I don't like to bc students can just end up sorta mindlessly following it like a checklist. I like to give _goals_ more, like "Write up your experiment as if it's a draft of a paper for publication, using literature and statistical support for statements". Then they have to think about how to address that goal, and that it really good for learning how to think/communicate in certain ways.
I love the idea of goals!
Love to know your thoughts about reconciling the ideal notion of peer assessment being a way for students to contrast/compare their knowledge with their peers vs the just previously mentioned competition between peers for grades (benefitting from worst grades for their peers). Just finishing up an online program and I've come to avoid classes which use peer grading - especially if it is part of the actual grade - because of the inconsistency and from the attempts to game the system (because of the stress to have a better grade - to be ahead of the distribution curve). Without some motivation - I've noticed as well the quality of feedback was typically less than zero.
As a general note - online does seem to suffer from a loss of connectivity between students - the loss of the "classroom" experience. Some professors latch onto peer grading as a means to ameliorate this - but it turns into a confrontation instead of a mutually beneficial activity.
Appreciate the written version and the blog post.
As a student I feel like I wouldn’t study at all or go above the bare minimum if there wasn’t any goals or punishments
I agree with you but we have to pass the course we are taking. My approach to my Master's is pass, but learning is the main focus. If I learn and don't pass, er, ok, maybe I need to rephrase that. I NEED to pass otherwise I may as well do what I've been doing before starting my Master's: learn for the sake of learning. Ideally, the assessment criteria perfectly align with your learning goals. So far, that's been the case for less than 10% of my course. No matter, as long as I pass. Saying that my reading and Googling have led me to your channel. There are wins everywhere here for me. I now need to get started with Obsidian.
Yes, I think a pass/fail system would be great. That is what it is for my PhD, either I get the degree or I don't get a degree. My work doesn't get a grade on it. I just need to resubmit until they fail me and I don't get a degree OR they pass me and I get the degree.
What about a system where students have to type their feedback into a form (do not allow copy and paste into the form), if it matches the actual feed back by around 90 - 100% then they can see their grades?
Ha! That is a fascinating idea. Then the goal would be about correctly identifying your mistakes and recognizing how to fix them. And only after you've accurately done that reflective work can you see the more arbitrary rating associated with it. Neat idea!
@@morganeua It might work very well for people who NEED to know their grades. Another option would be a follow up written assignment of the same form. Students would hand in their feedback then receive their grade if that second feedback assignment is accurate. That might be too much clerical style work for university professors though, which is why the IT version might be a better option. Prof time would be better spent discussing the feedback in office hours once students were in the habit of actually reading it.
@@liamwhalen, this sounds like guided inquiry. Eventually, universities will develop. Eventually. Hopefully. Maybe.
My university has already done this. I have to grade the course in order to see my grade. I did put effort in grading and giving feedback but not my friend, she just tab enter through the survey.
20:37 I could imagine this might be _very_ anxiety inducing for some students.
As a first year student currently writing exams for their first semester, thank you. I have always had a deep-seated “unsettlement” with grading. I’ve got ADHD and for a large part of my younger life, I was just simply good at making connections and reasoning, so nobody saw a problem with my learning because i got good marks. Meanwhile I was “learning” next to nothing, least of all how to learn. If you don’t need to put any effort in to get good grades, don’t fix what isn’t broken.
Then highschool began to hit, suddenly I had a 10% dip in my grades and classes that were easy 80s were now coming into low 70s. Again, nobody saw a problem because marks are sort of expected to dip in high school. Therein lay my problem, now I was years behind learning to learn, how to motivate myself and puberty was aggravating my undiagnosed adhd. Covid hit and that was almost the last straw, the 80 student was now a 60 student. I hated myself for it.
It didn’t help I wanted to get into vet med, in which my entire country only has one university that offers the program, and its extremely competitive. I managed to scrape my marks back and get 80s in everything but physics and chemistry, but the damage was done and I wasn’t accepted. Now I have to get in through a “side door”, by studying first year biological science and applying to transfer over with the marks of my first semester.
Marks. Marks. Marks.
I’m now diagnosed and medicated for my adhd, but while its been good for my motivation and discipline, it’s a blessing and a curse. I’m working all the time to get my marks up because nobody does well in their first semester of university. As someone who’s on the skinny side, ive probably gone back to the fat % of my 13 year old self. The bags under my eyes went from non-existent to sickly looking in the span of not even six months.
Just hearing that we had done the worst our chemistry module had ever seen in our test sent me into a five day complete depressive episode in which I came home, closed myself in my room and just worked, slept and ate. We hadn’t even gotten our actual grades back and just *hearing* that I *possibly* did horribly had that kind of effect on me? That can’t be how education is supposed to work.
And I love learning! I taught myself very rudimentary coding once during a holiday. Im still at least one semester ahead of my learning regarding genetics and inheritance because I found it fascinating at 16. I get glimpses of how I could love the modules I’m doing right now but I can’t pursue that because I need to put my full energy into whats going to get me marks! My brain *craves* connection and learning like a drug, and working for marks pollutes that intrinsic joy so that I celebrate never having to learn about that topic again.
However, at the moment, grades decide my life so unfortunately I just have to push through. But yeah, grading as it stands has got to be one of the worst ways to measure student understanding and encourage engagement. It has quite literally done the exact opposite for me and many others I’ve met. Thank you so much for this video, it just feels like a huge affirmation of what I’ve never been able to put into words. (Also sorry for dumping my entire life story into your comment section, love your video though! It’s very well presented and engaging and brought up a lot of stuff I’d never though about)
TLDR:
Grades suck because they dont work: Anecdotal word vomit by a burnt out first year undergrad student
Also just a side note- continuous assessment can suck if not done correctly. Our university implemented it during the pandemic and never thought to readjust when they brough students back full time this year. So 90% of our time outside lectures is doing and preparing for these assessments and not preparing for lectures or consolidating the work we cover in the lectures. Its almost like everything is one, never-ending assessment and you never get time to absorb whats being taught. It also doesn’t really help that my chemistry lecture went through three different lecturers because we were behind and the hod’s solution was essentially just “well what if we tried a new lecturer?”
3:40 "degrading" does not sound like something i'd like my teacher to do to me
1.Learning project based instead of Test based
2. Feedback based learning not grades based
3. If they don't understand - it's ok , let's just learn for longer durations , first part with teacher - second part with themselfs or dedicated group .
4. There is alot to say about this current status but the process will start when some universities will break the first wall - but that needs to be noisy (!).
To continue your line of thought 💭 :
- When i started to care about grades that's when I stopped learning.
When i successfully Learned it was when i was:
reading books, relaxing once for a while , did sports , friends , focused on the process by itself - on the principles rather then then A grade for continue my journey.
Second : tests some times fails measurably to even test us . They sometimes fails us by structure.
Love these comments! I feel similarly. One time I wrote an essay and submitted it and it was only once that pressure was off and I tried rewriting the essay differently, that I came up with something I was proud of! I love the suggestion of "If they don't understand - it's ok, let's just learn for longer durations"
Pure science and maths need to have some tests as the answers are usually correct or incorrect. I prefere a conversation or written assessment for soft science, humanities, and creative subjects. These strategies go too far as always. Sport gets vilified because there are winners. Students who aren't cutting it need to be told, not given a hug. Qualifications become meaningless if no one fails. Technical interviews are brutal and so many candidates go to pieces the first time they are put under real pressure.
I have a few random, meandering thoughts.
I think tests are an excellent learning tool for all fields. They are good because you can take up the answers and get feedback on how much you've learned up to that point. The recall also helps your memory. So, my critique is not of testing - although I'd need to do more reading to see how people have kept testing while getting rid of grades.
I love sports and that's an interesting metaphor. My sport of choice is running, but I'm not personally in it for the competition against others. That doesn't mean it isn't brutal and its brutality doesn't mean I'm not having fun.
I agree that students who "aren't cutting it need to be told." I don't think ungrading is the equivalent of a hug (nor do I think that's what you're suggesting). I think, if done right, not grading can actually be MORE pressure and intensity because it might require actual face-to-face evaluation, rather than just a random number on a piece of paper detached from the person who assigned it
@@morganeua I agree. Getting an A may be an indication of hard work for some but for the gifted it says to put your feet up. It lets them down when they are capable of so much more.
Wow... Morgan, Please take some time to reconsider your earlier position promoting "Not grading". It definitely improves as the video goes on. But that early position for No grades, and just the overall messaging about grading as harmful is a real problem especially because the harm of Not Grading (ungrading), is just as bad or even worse. To Summarize: Bad Grading practices are harmful, good grading practices are beneficial, and "ungrading" is generally useless or worse. Don't believe every study you read. (The TLDR dissertation is below -- if you dare... to press "read more")
Anyway back to the point: If you graduate high school with a PhD in Theater and Performance without getting graded... in fact, if you graduated with a degree in anything you wanted without a grade. How much did you learn? You don't need a grade right? So,... just pick up the PhD in whatever subject it is that you want... and move on to the next stage of your life... because you don't need a grade. How would you feel if EVERY person who attended your school... graduated with a PhD simply by virtue of attending. It's like a new philosophy... give every child a participation trophy, every child is a winner, every grade is an A, every graduate is a PhD, and every performance is the best! Yay. It's utterly fake. Because that is not real life. Real life, is competitive. So, everyone that "buys in" to this new ideology... is also buying into the idea that we won't need to compete. And when they don't have a job because they have no way to prove they know anything... they can still be happy with their self-worth (right?... Not)
Don't believe EVERY STUDY that you read. Ground breaking research doesn't actually mean anything if the conclusions that you take away from that research are invalid.
BAD Grading systems: Systems that grade on a curve, systems that don't offer feedback and the opportunity for improvement... highly subjective grading systems... THOSE systems are the ones that make grading really bad to deal with. In fact, I would say Degrees in Literature, Philosophy, Art, Theater and Entertainment etc are particular subjective, thus making it harder for teachers to provide grades. But, that doesn't mean that grading should be removed. It just needs even more attention to care.
Grading doesn't need to be perfect. But they do need to be consistent. Getting a B- in Algebra... DOES mean that you didn't do something exactly right... because that subject is much easier to grade than an Essay paper on English Literature. If your problem with a paper essay is that you can't tell the difference between a 70 and a 72 (@6:47) (I would argue that's a C minus but anyway)... If a teacher "feels" the grade is perhaps a 70 or 72, then I would argue that the grading system needs to be more objectively quantified by improving the scoring system that you use. I would argue that my college professors (in literature) had very poor objectivity. So, yea, I can see why you wouldn't want to be graded. But, without feedback, grading a "paper" is useless to a student. A teacher that simply marks a paper with a low grade does absolutely nothing for their students to improve them.
There are significant reasons that grading remains important: First of all, if you aren't graded... you won't be offered the "Privilege" of ANYTHING. Because no one will value your commitment... no one will KNOW how hard you worked (especially yourself), no one will be able to see that you spent the time to perform. No one will care. If the entire USA moved to a "no grade" system... your future doctor will have the probability of having the same intellect as everyone else around you. In fact, their intellect will not be measured, so you won't even have a clue. Because they won't NEED a grade and they won't have a grade.
This idea that grades harm people is ... well, bad for people. You can't measure performance without some sort of grading system. Because Pass / Fail and "Certified" or not are still grades.
The majority of students that only worry about their education when they are graded... ALREADY didn't care. Therefore, the act of NOT measuring their performance isn't going to change the fact the students Still don't care. The point of grading is not generally to make a student care but to guide the ones that do care and to validate one's ability.
The PURPOSE of grading is not to make you feel better about yourself. It is NOT to give you world experience. It is NOT to make you "WANT TO LEARN". It is NOT to give you freedom from your responsibility. But... getting a good grade often does making you feel better about yourself. Yes, you will have to sacrifice to get great grades such as not playing video games for hours every day, not spending every hour watching videos or chatting with others. So, yea... you actually have to sacrifice your time to get better grades. And that sacrifice MEANS something. If you never got a grade for that hard work, how much does that PhD really mean?
There are 3 main reasons why getting graded and thus a final grade is important:
1. It provides some standard to the rest of the world that the work and understanding that you did in a particular class was valid.
2. It provides some standard to yourself that the work and understanding you have is valid.
3. It provides feedback to you as you progress in the course work regarding your understanding, participation, overall ability in the course work.
So, I am sorry but I strongly disagree with this emerging idea that students don't need grades at least on most levels of education because it equates with the idea that a student doesn't need to know if they are doing poorly or well.
The problem that I see here is that if students don't need grades then they also don't need to care about their performance.
So, while I understand that you don't want your self-worth to be based on grades, that... is the ENTIRE POINT of having them. Don't get me wrong here tho... your entire self-worth is a mix of all that you do. Not just grades. But, your grades do have a role in your self-worth. For example, I might spend 1 day a week volunteering at a soup kitchen, 40 hours a week at my job, 20 hours a week as a student. I might spend 10 hours playing with my children. That all contributes to my feelings of self-worth. But, if I "fail" at playing with my kids, that contributes to negative feelings of self-worth. If I don't attend work, I don't get paid. That contributes to negative feelings of self worth. And if I don't get good grades, that also contributes. So, where you are in life, will influence the importance of grades, but certainly, most students should take grades seriously. The ones that do not, generally didn't care enough anyway.
How did I solve the problem of Grading: First, I personally believe my role as a teacher is to "teach". That includes objectively measuring a student's performance and then yes, providing feedback. I offer meetings with students who want to learn more. And most importantly, I try to provide assignments and tests that get multiple attempts and grade over the average of these attempts (for the content that is reasonably easy to deal with, and highest grade for very difficult work). This provides students the opportunity to improve. It allows them to try harder. And, it still gives them a Grade, so they know where they stand with their understanding.
Apologies for the lack of brevity.
A few more things: If I was told that I "had" to grade my students on a curve, I would be very very opposed to that. And, if they forced me to do it, I would likely just leave. There's no reason to grade on a curve. However, there are times when only the top students can "earn" a position. For example, the top 5 students might win a scholarship. In that case, some system that can determine which students perform better must be used. It doesn't have to be on a curve, but it does require measurement.
Peer Assessment should never be equated with "Grading one's Peers"... So, yes, students can help critique other students works, so that they can improve it. But, students shouldn't be grading themselves except as an "exercise". A student peer doesn't have the proper incentives to provide for a fair grading process. Unless the students were "trained" to provide fair grading they won't have the proper knowledge to grade properly. It is already hard enough to find grading systems that don't grade on a curve, and or don't provide consistent feedback, don't include an opportunity to improve a grade etc... So, as long as that Peer Assessment paper is specifically meaning "Assessment" in the terms of "Critique", sure. But if they actually mean "Students Grading their Peers", I would be strongly opposed to this except if it was a completely objective system such as "Marking" an incorrect answer from a Fill in the Blank / Multiple Choice etc. Due to computers, such a grading system using students is not needed.
Re: Withholding grades: horrible idea. You can't gauge your work that way. Feedback without a grade may look good on paper, but will be impossible to properly deal with if you give feedback without the grade, due to expectations of students. So, it might be a feel good moment... until the student that thinks they have a solid A, gets a lower grade.
Lastly: The reason you felt most fulfilled when students graded themselves is because generally they "agreed" with you. And when they didn't you had to have a meeting. This makes it easier because expectations are fulfilled. However, this only works because people are generally accepting their own evaluation of themselves. I can see this method as "useful" for highly subjective curricula as long as there is concordance of both opinions, but It won't really work when they think they deserve an A and only get a C.
I think I will have to respond to this comment in parts, because it's so long and thoughtful! So, first part: I am not graded for my PhD. PhDs are ungraded. You either get your degree or you don't, basically. My personal preference from my current understanding of the system would be a pass/fail system. This is how medical schools work, for instance. Either you get the degree or you don't. You pass or you fail. Not grading does not mean not evaluating people. And not grading doesn't mean passing EVERYBODY. Maybe it makes more sense to call this "less" grading because I guess technically there are 2 grades: pass and fail :P
@@marcfruchtman9473 I do understand that we need to hire people for jobs somehow and the quickest, easiest way to do that is by looking at their grades. However, I'm not sure it's the best way... I think interviews, sample projects, references, past jobs held, etc. are all better ways to find a suitable person for a job than their grades (especially because even in our current graded system some profs and some universities don't know what a good grading system looks like, like how you framed it above).
@@marcfruchtman9473 With withholding grades: it's not something I've ever tried, personally. And I probably wouldn't. I'm not sure how you'd reduce the anxiety of students over NOT knowing their grade :P But you say, "You can't gauge your work that way," and I would disagree. I gauge my work through others feedback all the time. Sometimes that looks like numbers (my more successful UA-cam videos are ones with higher view counts), but oftentimes it looks like written feedback or emotional response or what have you (like your feedback for me in these comments, thank you!)
@@morganeua Ah. Thanks for your many replies.I think I might have said this in the past, but, once you get to the level of masters / PhD, most of the filtering process for students has been done. Schools and professors are not as concerned with "grades" as much as completing the assignment because they already know you are capable of doing the work at a certain level of expertise. So, post-graduate degrees are a sort of "special case". My overall explanation was more toward undergraduate level education.
I wasn't sure if "you" were graded at the PhD level. I guess it works for pass / fail, but ultimately that's still a grade. Not what I would want for myself as far a gauging performance, But, I can see it working for certain school programs. I know we had grades based on a point scale in Med School. I am not sure how you would gauge performance without grades that demonstrate some sort of performance ABC, 70, 80, 90 etc. I think Pass/Fail wouldn't work for most medical school programs simply because only the most talented students are selected for things like Neurosurgery, etc... So, there would be a need for some way to measure that. Especially grades are important for how a student is selected for a particular "residency program." But, yes, I can see for certain curricula, it would not be necessary. In other words, if you just did the "pass/fail" system, you wouldn't have any way to understand whether or not you were capable of being in Neurosurgery until you failed the entrance exam repeatedly . So, I think that is just as traumatizing as knowing that you have a B+ average, and still not good enough for neurosurgeon. hehe. Now, I can't say for certain that "every" med school does it the same way, but in my experience, it was graded.
As for jobs, I wasn't necessarily saying that you would be selected based on your grades per se, because as you mentioned, there are interviews etc. And once you are in the job market, its not really about grades as much as ability to work. What I was trying to explain was that if you don't have grades, the incentive to do well is significantly lower since there is no real pressure. I think it will ultimately result in a lower quality of employee. So employers will be more likely to hire undergrads from a school that grades than from a school that has no grades. It really depends a lot on the reputation of the school in the local area. My concern would be that the school that doesn't grade would get a reputation as being "easy". Of course with mobility, local rep may not even matter. Ultimately, what you learn in school, your dedication to do the work, and overall ability etc, is what will allow you to excel. I tend to think grades mirror those abilities when done right.
Again, with my focus being mostly on the undergraduate level of education. Once you get to the higher levels, these students tend to be more highly motivated, more dedicated, and also have a built-in desire to learn.