Alternative Approaches to Grading - OneHE

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Guidance and help, Setting the tone activities

Alternative Approaches to Grading

Maha Bali

Mia Zamora

Jasmina Najjar

Laura Gibbs

Clarissa Sorensen-Unruh

Arley Cruthers

Consider different approaches to grading and how they can affect the classroom atmosphere and more!

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ACTIVITY PURPOSE

Consider different approaches to grading and how they can affect the classroom atmosphere and more!

USEFUL FOR

Giving students agency over their learning and removing competition among students and the stress of grades on students and teachers.

PREPARATION

Lots. Think carefully about what your underlying values are and how you can make them work within your institutional constraints; think about how much you can involve students in the process and have those conversations with them.

INSTRUCTIONS

Watch the video above for practical tips, or check out the resources for several different alternative approaches. Arley Cruthers’ infographics are a good visual introduction; the podcast with Jesse Stommel, Asao Inoue and Maha Bali is a good auditory intro; and the blogposts by Jesse Stommel, Alfie Kohn and Munir Fasheh are a good starting point. If you’re up for a longer read, we suggest Asao Inoue’s books and the edited volume by Susan D. Blum.

DURATION

Variable depending how you plan to implement it.

ADAPTATIONS AND EXAMPLES

You can do it for an entire course, or parts of a course.

TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS

N/A

USEFUL RESOURCES

Arley Cruthers infographics (which inspired this conversation)
Jesse Stommel’s blogpost: How to Ungrade
Alfie Kohn – The Case Against Grades
Munir Fasheh – The Trouble with Knowledge
Asao Inoue’s book – Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies: Teaching & Assessing Writing for a Socially Just Future
Asao Inoue’s book: Labor-Based Grading Contracts: Building Equity & Inclusion in the Compassionate Writing Classroom
Susan D. Blum’s edited volume: Ungrading
Getting Rid of Grades (book chapter) by Laura Gibbs
David Buck’s Ungrading Virtual Book Club
Some resources emerging from ungrading slowchat

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ABOUT

Educator prep: High
Student prep: None
Synchronous, Asynchronous
No tech needed
Duration: Variable

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