The Final Verdict on Being Grade-Less

Thanks to the support of Heather and the 8,000 members of the Teachers Throwing Out Grades Facebook group, I saw this 'grade-less' experiment through to the end. My hope was that students would focus on learning instead of numerical scores.

And I was right.

In my GMC student's evaluations of my course, they all focused on what they had learned and how much they had learned. There was no mention of their grades or my policies.

Did it help that they were invested in the content of the course, on how technology and social media impacts their lives, goals, attentions, and relationships? Yes, I'm fairly certain that it did. But their comments on the course reinforce the idea that my feedback on their writing without judgement is more important than the judgement. I asked them to revise that paper no less than four times.

I asked them to write in response to the readings I assigned. We wrote together in class, every class. We started with free writing, not to be shared or read by others. I gave them focused free writes in class, responding to the readings and videos we watched. I wrote with them as my belief that teachers who write with their students reinforce the importance of informal writing and the idea that we are all in this journey together. From these writings we learned not only about each other and how we each see the world, but we also learned about each other's strengths as writers. This constant writing, sometimes taking up a majority of the class time, was not overbearing to them. In fact, they viewed the writing as valuable to their thinking and to their progress as developing writers. The free writing, which might be viewed as a frivolous activity that wastes precious class time that should be devoted to covering content, was the chance for them to get whatever was occupying their brains before class out of their minds so that they could focus on our content. None of this in class writing was collected or graded, a new concept for many students. I wanted them to equate writing with thinking and I believe that this was conveyed repeatedly throughout the course.

I will continue to be grade-less. I believe in it's power to transform student focus onto their learning, rather than their grades.

The grade-less journey, week 2

Yesterday, after free writing, I asked my students if they had any comments or questions about the syllabus, my expectations, or policies. There were two comments: the first a comment that the student felt his writing was freer than if he knew it was going to be graded; the second comment from another student was to say that he wished his other professors were doing the same.

A couple of the students (out of five) did not complete the assignment for class, which was to watch the Frontline documentary "Digital Nation". One student said he had internet issues with his router and I asked if he had gone to the library and logged in there. He said he did not and quickly realized that he could have watched the video that way. A lightbulb moment of 'oh, I could have solved this problem on my own'. The other student did the wrong assignment. We talked about the calendar, which has all of the assigned readings and videos due for each class and this was followed by "what will you do differently next time?" In both cases, these students are freshmen.

In my grade-less class, there is no real penalty for making these mistakes, other than that you can't really participate in the discussion about the video. From our candid discussions, we talked about ways to keep ourselves organized. I showed them my planner and shared my life-long struggle with forgetfulness.

For the rest of class, I had already planned to make the discussion about the larger issues presented in "Digital Nation". After a focused free write about what they remember from the video and a sharing of those ideas,  we moved on to five articles about multitasking vs task switching, which was one of the central ideas presented in the video and which several students addressed in their writing. Each student read their article silently and then we discussed them as a group, often reflecting on these issues in our own lives. One of the articles used the analogy of animal foraging as way to describe our habits of multitasking. I really liked this article because the authors of the first book we are reading, Distracted Mind, talk about how now that we no longer have to forage for food like our ancestors, we have shifted this instinctual behavior to foraging for information. This was a good primer for that longer next conversation on Monday.

The students will be given a more formal writing assignment on Monday, a technological autobiography. I think that enough time has passed for them to have some deeper ideas about their history with and use of technology. Also, it will give me an opportunity to see some of their writing and give them feedback on it.

Going Gradeless at GMC

This semester, I am doing an experiment of going gradeless in my F2F class at GMC, and going grade-less in my online courses at the University at Albany. This is naked teaching at its finest!

What does this mean? For my GMC students:

"Instead of percentages or points, below are my expectations of a 'B' student. At the end of the semester, you will write a self-reflection of how you met these criteria, the learning/ELA outcomes for the course, and your own course goals, and we will have a conference to mutually determine a grade for you.

1. attend class regularly and on time—not missing more than a week's worth of classes (that means two). Being on time means arriving several minutes early. I will start class promptly at 2:30.
2. meet learning outcomes
3. take risks
4. engage/participate with texts/videos & classmates
5. write often, revise often, and develop engaging, cogent arguments based on evidence
6. encourage classmates in their ideas and writing
7. meet due dates

8. complete 90% of assignments, including a longer piece of writing (topic and genre to be determined by you.)

9. attend conferences with me to discuss writing and course progress

Grades higher than B, however, do rest on my judgment of writing quality. To earn higher grades you must produce writing that I judge to be exceptionally high quality."


Yup. This is it. This is what is important to me as an educator for student behavior and effort. I've realized that I can't really ask them to take risks without giving them some room for failure. This list of expectations is not predicated on their writing ability, though they do need to produce a longer piece of writing during the semester.

And what do I mean by 'longer'? I guess we will figure that out together. I want to get away from 8-10 pages, or 2-3 pages, double-spaced....etc., or anything that prescribes their final product. I want them to own it and work on it throughout the semester. Really embrace and develop a piece of writing that is deep, thoughtfully constructed, tangible, and evidence-based. I believe that this can be done in a number of ways beyond "the research paper."

This dream I have may fail, but I cannot help but hope for the best. One positive is that this class has only five students. It will have a seminar feel, with time spent writing (as thinking) and reading and writing (as thinking) and discussing writing and reading. We are in this together.

I leave you with this link about students as expert graders...

Looping in Voices

Today in Voices, the students did a looping writing exercise. For every reading day, students have to bring a one-page response to the assigned readings. These are not summaries of the reading, but Thought Pieces where the students write about their reactions about the text. They support these ideas with textual evidence.

I put the students in five groups of four and took a few minutes to explain the activity. One student would read his or her Thought Piece and instead of waiting for their turn to talk in response, the rest of the group remained silent once the reading was over. We waited for all the students who were reading aloud to finish and then I gave the class two minutes to free write a response to what was said. This process was repeated three more times for the remaining members of the group. One would read aloud, three would listen, and then two minutes of free writing. At the end of this part of the exercise, each student had three short free writes.

Then, I asked them to pick one idea from the free writes they had done and elaborate on it in another free write for five minutes. After this was done, the students were then allowed to discuss what they wrote with their group. I circulated around the groups and made notes of common themes or questions that came up. This small group discussion lasted about 10 minutes. Afterward, we finished the class with a whole-class discussion in which we talked about some ideas about the author's intent, potential symbolic meanings and what might happen next.

I thought this activity went really well and the students did quite a bit of writing today. For those who are hesitant to speak in class, this activity is great because they can simply read what they wrote and in a small group setting. We will do it again.

Next Thursday, the students will have their first Socratic Circle. I am very excited.

Voices so far...

This is my first semester teaching at Green Mountain College and I am teaching a section of Voices, the equivalent of freshmen composition, but themes around the ideas of community. My class is reading post-apocalyptic fiction, which fits right into this theme. P.A. fiction, at its heart, is about individuals who are seeking communities in which they can survive in a world that is vastly different than the one they knew. The books are a good read, not too heady, and offer a lot of variety for class discussions.

The first day, I covered the syllabus and my expectations, of course. I am structuring the course in a way similar to Peter Elbow in that I am trying to do away with traditional grading schemes. I want to separate the writing from the grading, but this is difficult in that 1) I have to evaluate them in some way and 2) they are very much accustomed to a traditional method of grading. I'm giving them some grades, a check system for their daily writing assignments, and whole letter grades for their papers, but the majority of their grade will be based on a portfolio they will turn in at the end. I used the whole-letter grade system for papers last semester in my work at the University at Albany. It went pretty well. I also struggle in that I want them to take the assignments seriously, so there are clear expectations as to what an 'A' in my class would look like and what they should be doing.

The other big experiment this semester is with badges. I am awarding badges to students who select writing goals from a list I provided them. They can be the "Sultan of Style" or the "Tyrant of Transitions," or the "Royal Feedback Bestower." So far, they seem to like this idea.

Class is structured with 'writing days' on Tuesdays and 'reading days' on Thursdays. I like the rhythm this schedule offers and I hope it goes well. Tuesday we will be discussing the importance of audience and genre, as well as how to write a research question, as they are completing their research papers at the beginning of the semester rather than at the end. The paper is an examination of a natural resource, scaffolded into parts to make the 15-page assignment more manageable. It is my hope that they will create a similar habit for themselves when they write for other classes in the future.

If it's not broke...fix it anyway

Teaching the same course year after year offers ample opportunity for pulling out those yellowed powerpoints and coasting.  It also offers ample opportunity to fine-tune, experiment, revise, and perfect (whatever that means in teaching) the course.  So, for the third time in as many years, I'm revisiting and revising my Logic course.

The main thing I aim to do this semester is to genuinely "flip" the Logic classroom, even more than last year.  I think this trendy term is probably overused and widely misunderstood.  Often, it seems to be code for a growing impatience with lecture, or maybe just resignation about attention spans that seem shorter and shorter each year (mine included!).  Some of the components of a flipped classroom, however, are likely to be quite useful in a class like Logic.

For example, I've been slowing building a small library of online tools for students.  Last year, I added to my collection of midnight white board videos that students can watch at their leisure.  These videos show my iPad screen as I work through logical problems, and though students don't see me, they hear my voice talking through the problems.  I use a free app, so there aren't really editing tools.  In that sense, students get the benefit of seeing and hearing Logic in the field, mistakes, swear words, and all.

I'm also revising those old, yellowed powerpoint lectures and posting them online prior to class.  I'm going to try to avoid using them as actual lectures in class this semester.  The greatest liability in my teaching is that I really enjoy doing Logic, and I especially enjoy having an audience!  So, I could spend whole class periods just showing my students how well I solve logical problems; but of course we know that students will learn better if they are the ones doing the problem-solving.  So my goal is to spend most class periods in Logic workshops.  Students will, of course, have to be prepared, but the only way to help them to develop those habits is to just expect them.  We'll see how that goes.

My other big experiment this semester is in using ungraded "badges."  My trusty undergrad apprentices are helping to make online badges for "leveling up" in class (such as badges in Venn Diagramming, Truth Tabling, etc.).  I'm generally suspicious of gamification in education, but perhaps badges will help to create community and a sense of accomplishment and belonging (via Logic) with this Harry Potter generation.  More on that later.

What they learned, what I learned: pre and post-assessment

They learned some logic, I learned some things about teaching and learning logic.  That makes us a pretty happy bunch.  One of the best moments in class this semester was the penultimate day, just before the final exam, when I handed out the same pre-assessment we had done on the first day of class.

On that first day, students approached the logic questions on the worksheet with wrinkled brows, worried frowns, and a little confusion.  While many students were able to reason through the logic of the questions and get some right answers, there wasn't much confidence.  When I handed them the same questions THIS week, I saw expressions of relief, comfort, and confidence.  They were smiling.  Students were able to quickly get the right answers, and were confident not only in their answers, but in why they were correct and what efficient logical rules and structures got them there.

Most importantly, students were also able see just how much they've learned in Logic this semester, and have a sense of accomplishment in what they've done.  I'm confident that this boosted their logical self-esteem going into the final, and also likely reinforced everything they've learned as they leave the class (hopefully to apply their logical tools throughout the rest of their lives).  Of course, it also gives me a sense of what this class has learned, as I continue to change and build the course from year to year.

So, that's one thing I've learned:  the value of a pre and post-assessment assignment.  Seeing the calm and confident way in which students used logic by the end of the semester in comparison with the start was a bright moment for me.