– Hi everyone, I’m Niya Bond, the faculty developer at OneHE and I’m really excited to be bringing Josh Eiler to you today. We’re gonna be talking about issues with grading and alternatives, which is a timely topic, Josh, because you are publishing a book on this very topic, is that right?

– I am, yes, it comes out in a few weeks.

– Perfect, and can you tell us what the title is, just so everyone can go run and get a copy?

– Sure, it is “Failing Our Future, How Grades Harm Students and What we Can Do About It”. It’s out with Johns Hopkins University Press

– And it’s getting published what date?

– August 27th.

– Perfect, so right around the corner, a good fall read for all of our community.

– Yes, sorry. Thanks for inviting me to do this. I appreciate it.

– Well we really appreciate you being here, thank you. So let’s jump right into how did you get interested in this topic? How did you discover for yourself some issues with grading that you wanted to tackle?

– I think, you know, intuitively a lot of us acknowledge some of the problems of grades that research confirms for us. Things like obstacles to motivation and fear of taking intellectual risks. But it wasn’t really until I was working on an earlier book “How Humans Learn”, and writing a chapter about failure, that I started to run into a lot of the research on just how many problems grades set up for student learning, both in the classroom and outside of it as well. And so that’s kind of piqued my interest and at the same time, as you know, the higher ed community was doing a lot of experimentation with grading. This really is a conversation that has ramped up dramatically over the last 10 to 15 years. And so all of that kind of came together for me and I was really interested in taking kind of a bird’s eye view of the conversation, really looking at all of the different angles on this subject from the classroom connections to the issues with parents and the home to mental health to inequities so that we could all be on the same page and really try to move this conversation forward. So that was really what was driving it. I’ve experimented with grading in my own classroom for at least a decade. And so that personal interest kind of aligned with the research that I was doing.

– Well I’m really glad you mentioned that contextualization outside of the classroom. ‘Cause I think a lot of times when we’re talking about grades, we do think about it in that isolated context or environment, but all of the things you just mentioned that are supported by, you know, it has an impact beyond the classroom too and.

– Definitely. And so certainly grades are setting up serious obstacles to learning and motivation. But to me, after writing this book, those academic concerns, although they’re important are in some ways the least significant of the issues with grading. The ways that grades mirror and magnify inequities in our educational systems and the ways that grades are contributing to the mental health crisis with teenagers and young adults. I think those to me, go well beyond the walls of the classroom and have a much more serious impact on people’s lives, not just their transcripts.

– Yeah, that’s such an important point and also such a huge undertaking when educators are thinking about this issue and what they can do about it. So as you were learning about the issues with motivation and other harmful impacts that grading could potentially have, what are the alternatives that you came across and what are the lights at the end of the tunnel?

– There are lots of different models out there and one of the most encouraging things about all these different models is that there is no one right model, no one right fit, no one right way to do any particular model that people are finding in fact. And so it’s a lot of mixing and matching and finding what is right for an instructor’s particular context. And also, I think it’s important not to necessarily be an evangelist for any one particular type of alternative grading approach, simply because instructor’s contexts and their institutions and their students and their class sizes and on and on are so very different that a cookie cutter approach just doesn’t really work for this. So, you know, some of the most popular include portfolio grading, standards-based grading, which is really popular in STEM disciplines because it allows for content and skill mastery at the same time. So it really helps set up STEM students to engage with other courses in the field, gives them the background. Specifications grading, ungrading, which is also sometimes called collaborative grading. There’s kind of a move in that direction. So lots of different approaches. All of them share though a common belief that we should be emphasizing learning rather than evaluation, that students learn at different rates. And so a grading system should allow for learning to unfold naturally. One person is not going to learn a concept in the same way or at the same pace that another might. And a lot of these alternative models give space and multiple opportunities for demonstrating that they’ve learned a particular bit of content or a concept. And the third thing that they all share is ultimately, what we are trying to do here is to reorient a student’s experience with grades. That’s the messages that grades traditionally send are negative messages about our academic achievement and our self-worth in many cases. And so these models seek to reorient that and to have students really focus on the learning that happens in the course rather than the outcome.

– I like what you said in that first point to emphasize learning rather than evaluation, which of course goes against grading just at its very core, right?

– Right, absolutely, yeah.

– These alternatives, so how are they combating the negatives of grading just generally, maybe we should start with what are the negatives of grading just generally?

– Sure, so if you think about the problems in the classroom, the two biggest ones, there are many, but the two biggest involve motivation. Grades are extrinsic motivators. And so they have a negative effect on intrinsic motivation. And so this is a huge area of debate among academics, right? And at the heart of the debate is how much does that matter to people? Right, and so what we know about extrinsic motivators like prizes and candy and grades is that they are useful if your goal is compliance. So yes, they will get people in seats, they will get people to turn in assignments on time and they will get people to participate. But extrinsic motivators like grades in no way can ever ensure that just because a student is in a learning environment that they will actually learn when they’re there because that requires intrinsic motivation. And so that is where we need to focus our attention on this particular issue. The natural cycle by which we learn includes trying something, failing, getting feedback on that, trying it again and grades arrest that process. Because really what’s happening is that you get one, you get an assignment, you’re given a grade, but you’re not generally allowed to learn from the mistakes that you’ve made. The grade goes in the grade book and you’re onto the next thing. So those are just the classroom issues. But if we also think about beyond the classroom, the ways that grades are connected to inequities. In many cases when students come to college from high schools with fewer resources, they bring with them what we call opportunity gaps. And those gaps are reflected often in the grades that they’re getting in their first and second year courses in college. Those grades are not any indication of those students’ potential for future achievement. They’re reflections of the past and the systemic inequities that those students are subject to. And so what a lot of these alternative grading models help to bridge those gaps by giving students more time for that learning to unfold, allowing students to go at their own pace, giving them multiple means, multiple opportunities to demonstrate learning, that helps to bridge over these gaps. It helps to mitigate the damage that those inequities can cause for our students. So that’s another important one. And finally, the mental health aspect of this academic stress, especially related to grades, is near the top of the list of every major study on the stress that is causing or a leading cause of the mental health crisis for teens and young adults. And the alternative grading models we’re talking about, their biggest advantage in this particular conversation is releasing the pressure valve on students, there’s not so much emphasis on a couple of assignments over the course of the semester, that they’re given more time to demonstrate that learning and they don’t feel the same kind of pressure that if I bomb this test, my future as a doctor is over. Right, that’s undue pressure for any human being, let alone an 18, 19, 20-year-old trying to figure out what their lives are going to be like. So a lot of these models reorient the work of the course to release some of that pressure.

– That’s really interesting and as you were talking, before you said the word systemic. I kept thinking about that, that while individual educators can explore these alternatives, there really are like structural and traditional models of education that have to change and evolve to alleviate some of these negative.

– Right, and so an individual cannot undo them, but an individual can help to mitigate the damage, right? And so a lot of wheels have to move at the same time, but that also like for people to feel as if they have some agency in that process because the decisions that we make can help move things forward.

– For sure, yeah. So for those in community who maybe don’t have a lot of experience but wanna get started, do you have any tips for just where to start and and what to try?

– I do, and they’re kind of scaffolded, so I think the most important thing that we can do as individual educators is to really think seriously about why we grade the way we do, what we believe about education and the purpose of education and the ways in which our grading models are tied to that belief or the way they might not align with our beliefs about education. To think about what is it about our disciplines or our past experiences with education or our traditional notions of education that has led us to grade the way we do and to really think seriously about all of those things to help to kind of give us some framework for making better, more informed decisions about the kinds of evaluation we’re using in the classroom. So that’s the first thing. I think a basic kind of reassessment of the practices that we’re currently using. You know, there are some folks who are just kind of eager to jump all the way in the pool and adopt a model standards-based grading and just run with it. I don’t think that’s for everyone. So another step that I would say is it’s okay to start very small, that you could start with just one assignment in your class. Choosing something to just give feedback on and to have students do some self-assessment of and then have a reflective process tied to that once they get the assignment back, you could just start there, see what the results are like and how you might build on it. Another dipping your toe in the water kind of strategy is to choose an element of the course to evaluate in a different way. And the one I always suggest to folks is participation. That there are newer models of participation or how to assess participation that ask students to choose their own goals for participation and to self-evaluate along the way and use that as the foundation for that component of the course. So that’s another way that you can just kinda get started. And then for those who are ready to do more holistic kinds of changes, really read more about these different models and find ones that really align with who you are, your values, your work in the classroom and your own students that don’t try to adopt one just because it’s popular because your colleague down the hall is doing it. Really do some reading around to figure out what might best align with your own approach to teaching.

– Well I love that you bookended that with that careful reflection and introspection that just is a part of educating, right, covering and evolving our philosophies. And I really like how everything you suggested helps with that intrinsic motivation. I think it’s like you said at the beginning, promoting agency and promoting, not extrinsic but intrinsic motivation for learners and probably educators too.

– Right, definitely.

– All right, well I so appreciate your time today. We always like to leave the last word to our experts. So is there anything you’d like to leave the community with on this topic?

– Yeah, if you’d look at the history of grading reform in our country, we are in the midst of the biggest and most successful period of reform that we’ve experienced. And I feel lot hope and optimism that this is a moment where we can really make change and it doesn’t always look like progress, but individuals making choices to do better for their students in this arena all working together, that is changed and that is progress and I think we’re seeing a lot of it.

– Well thank you, I appreciate that message of positivity and I also appreciate your point that even small changes can have big impacts, which is really valuable lesson.

– Yes, thank you for the invitation today.