Grading: What Students Say

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Updated:  December 2016... May 2017... December 2017... May 2018... December 2018.... May 2019... December 2019... May 2020 ... December 2020. And I added a similar post for what students say about creative work and about freedom.

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I have been thinking a lot about grading this weekend in order to write up a guest blog post (more about that here), and a friend suggested that I use student comments as part of that review: what a great idea!

To search for comments, I went to the online evaluation system we use for classes at the end of the semester. The ratings (numbers) are made public through our Provost's website, but the really useful stuff — the students' actual comments — are not released publicly; only the instructors and university administrators can see them. So, what I did was to look through those comments, going back through the evaluations since Fall 2010 (that's when we went digital) to find comments specifically about grading in the classes. There's nothing fancy: I just did a simple Control-F search in my browser for "grad" (grade, grades, grading, etc.) to see what turned up.

The results were really intriguing, and very encouraging too. Most importantly, there really weren't very many comments about grades compared to other things, which is part of my goal! On the other hand, you can see from some comments here that students are so used to the teacher "grading" things that they would sometimes refer to my feedback as grades — so when they said I was prompt in grading, they mean I was prompt in giving them feedback on their writing. That's not surprising: the word "grade" is all over the place in education, and we don't talk about "feedback" very much by comparison. My goal, of course, is to change that, so that we are focused on feedback instead of the grading!

Anyway, without further ado, here are their comments:

The class was graded in a way that emphasized what we learned, rather than a letter grade. 

I really like the way that Laura structures her class, placing emphasis on learning the material and doing your best, rather than just trying to get the work done so you get a certain letter grade.

The teacher always got back to people very promptly and she offered a lot of extra opportunities to earn points to help your grade! There was a large workload in my opinion, but the work helped me learn the material so it balances out in the long run.

I liked the way the class was set up, as well as the grading system.

I love the grading system. It made it easier to keep up with the work because it was based on the time that I had.

strong points: ability to work ahead - very quick replies via email and in terms of feedback - no surprises - encouraged a unique way of learning - non-traditional grading - self-paced

Laura truly cares about each and every one of her students and it shows. All of her emails were thoroughly researched and helped each student with their individual projects, providing background information and insight that a student most likely would not have discovered otherwise. She also provides many opportunities for her students to achieve the grade they would like in the class.

It allowed lots of room for people who love to write and research for fun while also providing structure for those who need structure. It was a very unique class set up that I greatly appreciated because it's difficult to grade writing on a normal scale. The instructor did a great gob encouraging student through the entire semester

strong points: everything from the grading to what the assignments should be like were all clearly outlined.

I loved the method of grading, especially since grading creative writing can be very subjective.

The grading style of the course is perfect for the content. You get the grade you deserve, and working harder means a better grade.

I wish more courses were like this. It allowed me to be less stressed about getting a good grade and instead I was able to put more energy into learning and working hard to create quality content. It also gave me the chance to constantly learn and adjust my writing because you can go back and edit whenever you want.

I enjoyed being able to complete the class without worry about being graded as long as I completed the necessary amount of points.

I liked the ability for students to work according to what grade they want to achieve, and to keep close track of their progress throughout the course.

The assignments were graded quickly and feedback was thorough.

Completion based grading really helped give freedom for students to try new things in their writing without worrying about how it will effect their grade Emphasis on growth mindset made me want to do the work for the class and really get something out of it

One of the best courses I have taken at OU and pushed me to learn rather than meet a grade.

We got to go at the pace we wanted and choose the grade we wanted to end with.

The self-pacing was great, and so was the structure of grading based on completion. I feel like I still learned as much in this class or more, compared to other classes.

I really liked how grading was done and how you had the opportunity to work on it when I wanted to.

It was so nice to have certainty about what my grade would be. This course was ideal in that you get out of it what you put into it. If you work hard and put the effort in, you'll get the grade you want.

I loved everything about this course; the online assignments, the completion grades, the ability to write blogs on our own and actually get better at writing, everything!

Grades were entirely based on completion, so long as you put in the work you didn't have to stress about grades.

There was an emphasis on learning the course material rather than worrying about grades.

We could move at our own pace, and forcus more on the stories and our writings more than our grade.

I loved the grading method in this course. It was quick and completion-based, though I was always motivated to do my work at a high level, too.

Laura is easy to communicate with, a fair grader, and provides her students with an interesting course.

I loved her approach that we controlled our own grades and could finish the course early if we wanted. I highly recommend this course to anyone. It's a ton of work, but the most unique course you will ever have to take!

great pacing of the course and loved that we could work at our own pace; lots of extra credit and opportunities to improve your grade, learn what interests you and develop your writing skills

I loved the fact that this class was self-paced and how the grading was based on whether or not you did the work thoroughly, so as long as you were willing to work, you could get a good grade.

I love how the course is formatted and the grading. I learned so much from this course.

It was nice to be able to follow the class and miss assignments without trashing our grades.

I came into it expecting to just be reading and learning about mythology, and was never expecting to be reading so many different types of stories and writing my own. The grading system encourages students to write for the sake of writing and not for the sake of a grade.

This is one of the best classes I have taken at the University of Oklahoma. I learned so much and never had to stress about my grade. I always knew where I stood in the course, the organization made me feel comfortable by the first week.

It was very fun and I learned a lot! I really liked that I had the freedom to write just to write rather than for a grade.

This was the most unique course I have ever taken as far as how it was managed and graded. This unique format gave me the ability to learn and express my understanding in a way that didn't come along with anxiety about grades. This is the first time I have ever taken a course and was not stressed about grades so I purely learned the material. It was amazing and I think I learned more in this course than I have in any other in a long time.

Very quick grader, open schedule, fun material, great feedback

I loved that you could pace yourself throughout the whole semester and you had control over how you wanted to schedule assignments. There were many different kind of opportunities/assignments we could choose from so it was easy to choose something that we were interested it. Laura did a wonderful job at grading assignments and offering personalized grading.

I like that we were in charge of our grades based on how much effort we put in.

Laura is great! She has put a lot of work to make this online class fun for students and she is so prompt about grading items and giving awesome feedback to students over their writing!

I had never taken an online course up until this point in my career, but this turned out to be one of my favorite classes I've ever had. You have the ability to learn as much as you would like to about the subject and the grading style was a welcome refreshment.

The self-grading was definitely a nice feature. Also the ability to work at your own pace and the freedom to choose your own readings. This class afforded me freedoms that I was not granted in any other class. I felt like I was being treated like an adult for once.

I liked not having to worry about my grade. I got to work as hard as I want to achieve my desired letter grade. She was very upfront about everything from the very beginning. SO SO organized.

One of my favorite classes I've taken at OU. The content, structure, and grading of the course was terrific!

Choosing the grade I wanted and being able to map out what I wanted to do to get there on my own schedule was really useful and lowered my stress significantly in this course.

I really liked it. It was fun and was all about learning not just a grade.

The way the class is set up and graded was very fair.

I loved the class because of the felxibility and the way it is graded.

The declarations were a really good idea. Even if I forgot to do it, I could email the professor to get the points. It was like self grading.

This was the first class that had a grading method like this. I really liked the way this course was laid out.

Grading yourself was very convenient, not having to wait weeks for grades was nice.

If I could take it again, I would. I cannot express enough what a great class this ended up being. It gets an unfair rap for being easy, when in actuality, it's exactly as difficult as you make it. You can glide through and do the bare minimum and still probably get an A, or you can rise to your own standards and push yourself and earn the grade you get.

I really liked how there were a lot of assignments and grades were given based on participation. I felt that I learned much more this way because the emphasis was on learning and creativity rather than a test.

We were able to choose what we wanted to read each week. The choices I had in the class was the best part. It made me feel as though I had control over my grade and my learning.

I liked the near instant grade feedback that was provided by Professor Gibbs.

I like how it was self graded.

It was great! I enjoyed it so much! I loved being able to read and write for a grade!

Everything is completion based, so the grading is fair.

Even though the workload seemed like a lot, she made it possible to still achieve the grade you want by offering extra credit every week.

I feel the strongest point of this class is the very self-paced, self-set tactics. You pick the readings. You set your schedule. You report your grades. The work is engaging and the professor is always available for assistance and support.

Very fairly graded, professor did an excellent job making sure we improved our writing.

I like that I was able to take control of my own grade.

Grading system is the best I have seen.

the grading was based on whether or not you did the work, so that was nice in the sense that we didn't have to worry about doing every little thing right.

Laura was an effective instructor and gave more than enough opportunities to improve grade.

The self grading bit was really strange.

I really appreciated the way our assignments were graded. This class focused so much more on growth than grades, and that made the class feel like a much more positive environment than others I've taken before. When I fell behind in this class, I knew I could catch back up, because the focus was so much more on growing in my writing.

Also, the course was graded fairly and always had a fair amount of work for the grade.

Very fair grader.

I loved the grading system.

I also enjoyed having the freedom to work ahead, self-grade and get the course done early, as well as the freedom to choose the readings and the direction of the stories.

a good way to do an online course. very easy to do and get a good grade, but you do have to do the work and think about it.

I liked the ability to work at my own pace and the structure of the syllabus. The assignments were consistent each week, and challenged us to explore the creative side of our brains. The grading was always fair.

I loved being able to write what I wanted and not be graded subjectively. It made it easy for me to be creative!

I just love everything about Dr. Gibbs format of this course - it really allowed me to use my own creative ideas, gather up points for my desired grade, and receive feedback from her and students in the class.

Being graded based on completion rather than content encouraged me to be creative with my writing.

I love that the course was graded on accumulated credit instead of percentage of credit; it encouraged exploratory learning that was perfect for the material.

I love how Dr. Gibbs is so hands off and lets the students learn by discussing things with each other, while at the same time being there when we need her. She is absolutely wonderful at grading storybooks. When she likes something she lets you know. This is really encouraging, especially for people who don't have much confidence in their writing. I loved the positive feedback she gave me.

Laura always grades extremely fairly.

You could work at your own pace, and the grading was very fair.

I really loved how interesting she made this class and how fairly she graded everything. You knew what to expect when going into the semester and that is what I like. If you worked hard you got a good grade and that is how I think classes should be. Also I liked how one bad grade did not screw you over like other classes.

I love the concept of grade declarations rather than waiting for each assignment to be looked at and put in by the instructor, and the grading system in general was one of my favorite things about this course. Everything was very clearly outlined from the beginning and it was easy to see where I was at points-wise I at any time I chose.

In many of my online classes I feel like I don't learn that much, but that was not the case whatsoever for this course. I also really enjoyed the grading system and the control we had over which assignments to do each week.

I know that this is an online course and you have to do more work in order to get a good grade but the workload amount seemed a little excessive. This still did not affect how much I liked the course though.

I learned a ton about topics I did not know. The grading was primarily completion which is great as long as you stay on top of things. Also, the assignments were fun and I learned a lot at the same time.

The grading system used in this class was very effective for the type of work completed.

Being able to work at your own pace was a godsend. It really helped to be able to anticipate busy weeks and get this course's work done ahead of time. My grades in my other classes were definitely better because of this.

I liked the freedom to work ahead. Access to most of the coursework allows students hold students accountable for their own grade. I enjoyed diversity of the material and the quality of the content.

I love that each week the student has the choice in which readings to complete. I liked the grading system being point based and up to the student.

I really enjoyed how prompt the grades were posted and the ability to manage time personally and control your grade from the start.

I am always worried about taking online courses because they are difficult to keep up with sometimes, but Ms. Gibbs does a fantastic job of not only being fair with grading, but providing feedback with all of the work that I did and helping me reach the grade that I wanted/deserved at the end of the semester.

I learned a lot and felt that it was graded fairly.

She designed the course in such a way that the students could work at their own pace and design their own grades. The motivation for this was high for me, encouraging me to want to learn more and do my best.

Easy to finish class early and graded based on completion. I also liked not having tests.

I like the way the class is graded. I find it really contributes to learning vs memorizing.

I love her grading system and her teaching methods. I was learning things without even realizing it!

I would say that the load is too high, but the grading is more than fair.

I really liked how reasonable Laura was. The work wasn't hard or too heavy, but she always made a point to be understanding if it was time for midterms, etc. She said she understood if we couldn't get something done and gave us a link to see about how much we could not do to still get the desired grade.

The grading system was really great; convenient, easy to figure out, and always felt like it reflected the work I'd done. The wide range of topics and enthusiasm of the instructor for the course material were the best parts; getting personalized feedback was really encouraging.

I like how we had the opportunity to think for ourselves. Our writing could be about whatever we felt like and were read without judgement. I also like the improvement in my proof reading skills. I felt like I was pushed in this area and therefore I was able to grow. I thank Laura for helping keep this course interesting but also challenging our learning but giving us multiple opportunities to make the grade that we desire.

It had a fabulous structure that included a good amount of work but allowed the student to complete the assignments and the course early. Through this course, I feel as though I was able to really improve my writing more so than I have in any of my honors college courses. Perhaps because this class was less pressure? I'm not sure, but I believe the structure and the grade upon completion with comments from peers allowed me to be more confident in my writing.

I loved the way this course was graded.

I thought this course was awesome because it gave us so much freedom to do the work whenever we wanted to. It was also good because as long as we did the readings and the writings we would get a good grade. This was new for me because usually everything in previous classes was graded hard. This took the pressure off worring about getting an A or B and actually learning the material.

Laura is very organized. Her students always know what to expect in the course and can work for the grades they want.

Despite the workload, it was very enjoyable. Also, since we had a lot of control over our grade, it felt much less stressful.

I loved how you could work at your own pace. There were so many points and opportunities for you to get the desired grade. It was great to know that you had a goal and it motivated me to do the work for the class.

It was enjoyable and creative. It was also easy to know where I stood in the class and how my grades would turn out.

Laura was extremely organized. The course was organized in a manner that was conducive to students' schedule. You are able to pick your grade. You get the grade you work for.

All students knew exactly how much work was required to obtain their desired letter grade.

I loved the course. The material is intersting, there is plenty of chances to earn the grade that you want.

It emphasized much more creativity than most courses that I have taken. It was a very nontraditional course but set up very well. Laura Gibbs did an excellent job of managing the course and grading fairly.

Laura did a great job managing the class, was always prompt with grading and questions.

The instructor had an extremely fast turn around time for graded assignments and was also very prompt answering questions.

I also appreciate the feedback from the instructor. She paid individual attention and feedback on my assignments and I felt like she spent as much effort grading my assignments as I did writing them.

I really enjoyed that she allowed for us to submit assignments on our own time and that we could stop working when we got the grade that we wanted.

You put a lot of time into the course but you get out what you put in. I also liked that you basically decided what grade you got based on how much work you wanted to do. You knew that as long as you did the work, you would get a 100. This doesn't mean it was easy though!!

I love that it was a "work at your own pace" kind of class. I love classes where I don't have to really worry about my grade. Therefore I was glad to do the assignments, because I was actually interested in them.

I always knew what grade I had and what I needed to complete in order to get the grade I wanted.

Open your mind with a new perspective.

(Growth Mindset Cats)

Ungrading for More/Better Feedback

I've created this post as an omnibus of resources to accompany my guest post for Starr Sackstein's EdWeek blog: (Un)Grading: It Can Be Done in College.

For me, what the students say about (un)grading is the most persuasive evidence there can be. Here is a collection of student comments about grading from their end-of-semester course evaluations. And while you're at it, check out what the students say about creativity too. A big part of ungrading for me is unleashing student creativity!

My assessment approach is all feedback - no grades, and I have collected a wealth of feedback resources, both for my own use and for my students to use here: Feedback Resources. If you have additional resources I should add, let me know. You can also follow my feedback work at my Canvas Community blog.

Starr Sackstein is the author of Hacking Assessment: 10 Ways to Go Gradeless in a Traditional Grades School, which is a FANTASTIC book about alternatives to traditional grading. I highly recommend it! I read the Kindle version from Amazon. Another must-read book is Alfie Kohn's Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes, also available as a Kindle from Amazon.

LEARN MORE

Below is a list of articles I've bookmarked on grading/ungrading, and you can find more resources by following the #TTOG hashtag at Twitter. Plus you'll find more articles here: Feedback Resources (there's a specific section there about feedback versus grading).

Why I Don't Grade, by Jesse Stommel. This beautiful piece is a great way to start re-thinking assumptions about grading, showing what damage grades can do and how they get in the way of real learning.

Ungrading, by Susan D. Blum (in Inside Higher Ed). Formal education has led to a lack of learning in a number of ways, argues Susan D. Blum, and the one change that can make a big difference is getting rid of grades.
This is a detailed article which identifies the wide range of problems caused by grading, and the ways in which you can solve these problems by going gradeless.

IHE's John Warner interviews Susan Blum: I Love Learning; I Hate School 

The third [wish] is that there would be no grades. In that way, the measure of success would have to come from elsewhere--from application, satisfaction, from how well the learning actually works. As another of my touchstones, Frank Smith, says in his wonderful The Book of Learning and Forgetting, most learning--aside from in school--is continuous, effortless, independent of rewards and punishments, and never forgotten. It is only in schools that learning becomes so difficult, dependent on rewards and punishments, and easily forgotten.

And also from John Warner about his own teaching: When Students Say Grades "Matter," Give Them a Choice (and check out his other blog posts in his ongoing experiment with contract grading)

Paul Thomas: Not How to Enjoy Grading But Why to Stop Grading (Thomas is a co-editor of De-testing and de-grading schools: Authentic alternatives to accountability and standardization; see the blog post for more about that book)

Mind/Shift's Katrina Schwartz: How Can Students Be Successful in a High Stakes World?  

No grades: Commenting on a piece of work forces students to internalize changes rather than focusing on exclusively on the grade. 

David Nagel: Ditch Grades Now, Focus on Student Learning
(report on a SXSWedu conference organized by Mark Banes)

Mark Oppenheimer: There’s nothing wrong with grade inflation. Grades don't matter anyway. Here's why.
Overall, graded students are less interested in the topic at hand and — and, for obvious, common-sense reasons — more inclined to pick the easiest possible task when given the chance. 

NPR's Anya Kamenetz talking with Todd Rose: Standards, Grades And Tests Are Wildly Outdated, Argues 'End Of Average'
In higher ed we have a brutally standardized system. It doesn't matter what your interests are, what job you want, everyone takes the same courses in roughly the same time and at the end of the course you get ranked.

(image from NPR article)

Jeffrey Young (Chronicle): These Videos Could Change How You Think About Teaching.
Profile of Michael Wesch, including his "not yet" grading; you'll also find his great video, here, "The Sleeper."

Justin Tarte: 10 Signs There's a Grading Problem in Your Classroom. I learned about this one via #OklaEd chat! :-)

No Grading, More Learning. An article in IHE about Cathy Davidson: Her plan? Turn over grading to the students in the course, and get out of the grading business herself. Now that the course is finished, Davidson is giving an A+ to the concept. "It was spectacular, far exceeding my expectations," she said. "It would take a lot to get me back to a conventional form of grading ever again."

John Spencer: What Happens to Student Engagement When You Take Away Grades?
Kids aren't concerned about compliance in a non-graded classroom. Don't get me wrong. There are deadlines. There are creative limitations. There are routines. I believe that limitations can be a part of what makes creativity thrive. However, when grades are gone, students are less likely to worry if they are doing things the "right" way.

And Twitter may give us only 140 characters, Christopher Moore is able to sum it all up in a single tweet: feedback is everything, grades only reveal our anxieties over the system of assessment turning against us.

Lee Skallerup Bessette: Assessment as Care, Assessment of Care. Lee's post offers a beautiful defense of assessment-as-conversation, something the vocabulary of ABCDF obviously does not support very well: Grading and assessment become conversations, instead of two competing monologues. Learning becomes the thing, instead of stand-ins for what learning could superficially look like.

Also, check out this nice article in our student newspaper with remarks from me and from Rob Reynolds (he and I have been trading ideas about grading since we met at OU back in 1999): Test anxiety, grade inflation call traditional grading system into question by Lauren Massing.

This Medium post by Arthur Chiaravalli is extremely useful, including reports on research by Hattie and others:Teachers Going Gradeless. Toward a Future of Growth Not Grades. I especially like the distinction here between gradeless as the decision to "grade less" or, alternatively, to proceed "without grades" entirely.

Great piece by Jennifer Hurley about feedback, writing, and revision... and giving up rubrics: Why I Threw Away My Rubrics: "When we acknowledge our students as individuals, when we read their work with respect and openness, we can let go of the terrible psychic burden of being their judges and “executioners.” I no longer dread reading my students’ work. I am excited to see what they have to say and to see how I can help them. Try a semester without rubrics and grades, and you will never go back."

Check out this great article by Ashley Lamb-Sinclair in The Atlantic: Why Grades Are Not Paramount to Achievement. There's a write-up of her article by Katrina Schwartz at Mind/Shift: Are Grades Diverting Focus From Real Learning?

(Un)Grading: It Can Be Done in College

This is a guest blog post that will be appearing in Starr Sackstein's Ed Week blog: (Un)Grading: It Can Be Done in College

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I'm an instructor at the University of Oklahoma, teaching General Education courses in the Humanities. In this post, I'll explain my (un)grading system: the students do the grading, while I focus on feedback. I developed this approach based on my students' needs and my own belief that I can do a better job as a teacher if I take myself out of the grading loop. Here's how it works:

My Grading Challenge. I meet all kinds of students in my classes. Many are seniors who enroll in whatever Gen. Ed. courses fit their schedule. As a result, some students are interested in the subject; others have no interest at all. Some students want an A; others just need to pass. The courses are writing-intensive, but few of the students see themselves as writers, with majors ranging from accounting to zoology and everything in-between. They might love to read, or they might see reading as a monumental chore. You get the idea: diverse students, diverse goals. So, I need a grading system that respects those differences.

The Solution: Choices and Points. Each week, students choose the assignments they want to complete. They do one or two reading assignments (there are lots of reading options to choose from), they write a story of their own, and they leave comments on other students' work. They also work on their semester-long project. As they finish each assignment, they complete a "Declaration," a true-false quiz consisting of a checklist. When a student answers "true," the points go automatically into the Gradebook. I do no grading; all the points for all the assignments are recorded by the students themselves. Some students may be aiming for an A (more points), or for a B or a C (fewer points); that is all up to them — not me.

My Role: The Coach. Because I put myself outside of the grading loop, I can focus all my efforts on feedback and encouragement — on teaching, not grading. I provide detailed comments each week on the students' writing, and the students use those comments for future revisions. The comments are not a grade; instead, they are meant to help the students become more confident and skilled as writers. The students are also coaches, commenting on each other's work every week. We are all working on our writing, not thinking about grades.

Here are the things I like best about this approach:

1. The grades are objective. Students know exactly why they get the grade that they do: they manage the grading, and they have no grade complaints at the end of the semester. They might complain that the class is a lot of work, or they might complain about some other aspect of the class (which is good: I need their feedback!) — but there are no complaints about the grades, and that is a relief both to the students and to me.

2. The system is simple. Students do the work or not; they get the points or not — it's that simple. At any moment of the semester, students know exactly where they stand.

3. Grades are not a judgment. Students know that they can choose to work towards an A or B or C for their own personal reasons. An "A" student is not a better student than a "C" student, and getting a "C" in the class is not a punishment. A student might decide to take a "C" for their own reasons (heavy workload in their major classes, other life commitments, unforeseen events of all kinds), which is fine. As long as students pass the class, they are making progress towards graduation — and that's the goal!

4. There is no grade anxiety. Grades can be a terrible source of anxiety for college students (just ask them; they'll tell you), and if grades are making students anxious, they are not going to do their best learning. Removing anxiety about grades can refocus their attention on the learning itself. That goes for teachers too: I know I am a better teacher because I don't have to spend time worrying about grades.

5. The system promotes good time management. The assignments are meant to be completed in a single work session; some tasks might require 15-30 minutes while others might take an hour, but not more. I hope that as students see the benefits of this iterative, task-based approach, they can apply that same strategy in other classes where there might be only a few high-stakes assignments which the students must segment and schedule on their own.

Are there drawbacks to this system? Of course there are: if the grade is what goes on the transcript, students will think of the grade first and the learning second. I would far prefer to use a pass/fail grading system combined with portfolios of student work, thus highlighting the work itself, not the letter grade. Realistically speaking, though, I don't expect to see an end to ABCDF in my lifetime. I am just glad that as a college instructor I have the freedom to design a grading system that can minimize the damage grades can do. If you'd like to learn more about my (un)grading system, I've collected some materials at Grading.MythFolklore.net, including comments from my students. And if you have questions, let me know; this is an important topic that I am always glad to talk about! You can find me at Twitter (@OnlineCrsLady) or by email: laura-gibbs@ou.edu.

Safety Nets

As we get near the end of the semester, I can tell that students are more and more stressed out, and so I am very glad that my courses have a lot of "safety nets" built in. I do have high expectations for my students and the work they will do, but I also know that life can be kind of overwhelming sometimes, so safety nets are important... vitally important in fact!


BRIEF DESCRIPTION. There are a variety of strategies I use that fall into the category of "safety nets" to help students cope when things don't go according to plan. These include both time scheduling strategies (Grace Period, Alternate Project Schedules, Late Projects) and flexible assignments (Half-Reading, Portfolio Option, Storybook Free Passes, and Extra Credit). It is my goal that every student should pass the class, and these strategies are designed to help them bounce back from anything that goes wrong and to keep on moving forward.


DETAILS.

Grace Period. I've written a post about the Grace Period, which is an automatic no-questions-asked extension for assignment deadlines.

Alternate Project Schedules. I need to write up a post about this, but the basic idea is that students can miss and/or repeat a given week in the Storybook or Portfolio schedule and still carry on using an alternate schedule. No backtracking, no making up missed work; instead, the schedule adjusts to the fact that they missed a week for whatever reason, and they carry on from there. You can see the alternate schedules for the Storybooks and the Portfolios here: Storybooks and Portfolios - see bottom of page for alternate schedules. I also have an FAQ about that for the students: Alternate Project Schedules.

Late Projects. The Storybook/Portfolio assignment is due at the end of each week, with a Grace Period that extends until Monday at noon. After this, students can turn in the project assignment for partial credit: later on Monday, 8 points (out of the 10 possible); Tuesday, 7 points; Wednesday, 6 points; by Thursday noon, 5 points. The hard deadline of Thursday noon allows me to still get comments back to the students by the end of the week. Admittedly, I do not always apply the late penalty. If I know that a student is struggling with something, I often tell them to turn in the assignment by Thursday noon and just to remind me not to count it late. Also, if someone turns in something late, but it is really excellent work, I don't apply the penalty, and I make a point of explaining that in the comments I send back. If, however, something comes in late and shows signs of having been done in haste, I apply the penalty and I do so without hesitation. The students can always make up the missing points with extra credit (see below), but I am frustrated when I see haste and sloppiness, and this is one way that I do indeed try to counter that sloppiness. Having students revise the work is, of course, the important way to counter that sloppiness, but I would rather put a stop to it earlier than the actual revision assignment!

Half-Reading Option. Each week the reading is split into two halves, with specific accommodation for students who end up only having time to do one half. I've written a post about the half-reading option here.

Portfolio Option. I've written a post about the Portfolio alternative to the Storybook; it's a new experiment for Fall 2014, and I would say it has been a big success.

Storybook Free Pass. This is something I have done in response to a student last semester who, when commenting on my idea for the Portfolio, suggested that I do something extra for the students choosing the Storybook since it is indeed more work than the Portfolio. I thought about that a lot, and it was pretty tricky because I absolutely did not want the people doing the Portfolio to feel penalized in any way for their choice. In the end, I came up with something I am calling a "free pass," and Storybooks have two free passes built into their schedule that the Portfolios do not. I need to write up a separate post about this because it is a little weird, but it has worked out wonderfully! Most of all, it has been a big help for the students who start out struggling a bit at first with the Storybook (which is admittedly more complex than a Portfolio), so that the free passes allow me to help students to really slow down and think about the organizational aspects of their projects without any points penalty. I need to write up a post about this. It's kind of complicated, but it has been a really great thing, both to create a sense of equity between the two different project options, but also as a way to help people do a better job with the Storybooks overall.

Extra Credit. I need to write up a long post about my whole philosophy of extra credit, but basically it is this: I can only ask students to do 6-8 hours of work per week... but there is so much more that I would like for them to do, especially on the interactive side of the class, reading and responding to other students. So, I have no problem at all of thinking up lots of great extra credit assignments, because they are exactly the assignments I would require of the students IF we had more time together. In that sense, there is really no difference at all between "required" and "extra credit" ... all points go into the same pot, and I consider all the assignments to be of equal value in terms of the overall learning experience and success of the class. They are "extra" only because I am asking the students for extra time. I do need to write up a post about this approach in general; it is one that is really important to how I see the overall course design and how, ultimately, student choice is the single most important factor in that design. To see how extra credit works now, check out the Myth Assignments and Indian Epics Assignments pages.


HISTORY.

I've always let students work ahead, and I still consider that the single best safety net of all: if they can work ahead, instead of waiting for the deadline, then they have a built-in cushion to accommodate anything unexpected. When I first started teaching online, I was very naive about that: I assumed that all the students would work a day or two ahead, and maybe a week or two, and that would be all the safety net I would need. Unfortunately, that proved not to be the case. Even when given the opportunity to work ahead, most students wait for the deadlines; I'll blame the schooling environment for that bad habit. Given that students are rarely given the opportunity to set their own schedules and work ahead, it's not surprising that the habit is hard to adopt at this late date in their school careers.

So, as a result, I've added in these different safety nets over time. I'll try to list them here in the order that I have added them over time.

Extra Credit. This is something I also had from the start. I originally intended it as a way for students to build up credit in advance, but it quickly became obvious that they also needed extra credit options to make up for missed work.

Alternate Project Schedules. I probably started this a year or so into my online teaching career since it was a natural feature of the Storybook project. There's no specific reason why a Storybook has to have four stories total in the end — three stories or even just two stories can make for a good project. As a result, I early on decided to make it easy for students either to miss a week and/or spend an extra week on revisions, with the alternate schedules showing how they would then proceed to the end of the semester.

Late Projects. This is something I started doing around 2005 or so. I originally accepted late projects without penalty up until Thursday noon, but this became so onerous for me in terms of the workload I had at the end of the week, trying to get comments return to everyone by the end of the day Friday, that I had to institute the partial-credit policy.   I feel badly about how that works (I don't like the idea of penalties at all, and I do call it "partial credit"), but so many students are oriented towards the deadline for an assignment that, without a real distinction between the soft deadline and the hard deadline, they will indeed wait for the hard deadline.

Grace Period. This is one of the single best things I ever came up with, and I guess it dates to around 2007. The students certainly did not enjoy writing me to ask for extensions (and I had students writing me basically every day), and I certainly did not enjoy hearing about whatever particular problem it was that prevented them from completing an assignment before midnight. I realized that of course it didn't matter to me whether an assignment was done at midnight or 3AM or 10AM for that matter, as long as it did not affect the overall workflow of the class. I wish I had thought of this sooner: it's been great for both the students and for me, given me a chance to send out a reminder email each morning that really is a big help to some students who do just need a last-minute nudge. They do their work mostly in the evenings and at night; I do most of my schoolwork during the day. The Grace Period is a perfect way to take advantage of that fact!

New for Fall 2014: This semester has been a time of all kinds of changes in my classes, and I am so happy with how those changes are going! In terms of safety nets, these three are new in Fall 2014: Half-Reading, Portfolio Option and Storybook Free Passes.


GOALS. Quite simply, my goal is for every student to pass the class. If a student fails a class simply because of poor time management skills or poor workload management skills, that seems to me a very bad business indeed. It means the student has lost out on the money they have paid for the class, and they have an "F" on their record which really does not indicate engagement with the course material one way or other other; instead, it usually just represents a failure to engage at all as a result of poor time management and workload management skills.


GENERAL THOUGHTS

I really believe that addressing the issues of time management and workload management head-on are is an incredibly important aspect both of course design and also of our day-to-day interactions with students. Some people might say that in a college course, it should be all about the content and it should be left entirely up to the students to do their own time management and workload management; to design a course with these factors in mind is considered by some of my colleagues to be "pandering to the students" or "dumbing down" of the class. I disagree. If the end result of these strategies is to increase the OVERALL level of student engagement with the coursework, then the exact opposite is true: by strategizing about time management and workload management, I am "smarting up" the class rather than dumbing it down!

(GrammarCatz)

Grading without Fear

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I've updated all my (un)grading materials here in much more detail: (Un)Grading - An Omnibus. That's the post you want to read. :-)

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I've been thinking about the wonderful post by Mark Barnes, My Throw Out Grades Challenge Video, along with all the great posts at Joe Bower's blog about abolishing grading. I would also recommend this post by John Spencer: What happens to student engagement when you take away grades? While I cannot abolish grades in my classes, I have managed to reduce my role in grading to zero, and it's something I consider crucial for the success of my classes.
A sad update: Requiescat in pace Joe Bower.


BRIEF DESCRIPTION. My school uses an A-B-C-D-F grading system, no pluses and minuses (thank goodness). Within that institutional constraint, I have created a points-based grading scheme, and the students record their own points in the Gradebook using Declarations: they complete checklists in the form of a true-false quiz for each assignment, and those points are automatically recorded. The students thus keep track of their own work, and the result is the grade they have earned based on their total points at the end of the semester. I do set the grading scale and, yes, it is arbitrary, like all grading scales are. Aside from that, though, I do no actual grading for the course. All my time is spent giving feedback (not grades) on their projects every week.

DETAILS. The best way to see how this works in detail is just to read what I explain to the students. I love being able to tell the students right from the start: the grade has nothing to do with me — but we have other important work to do together: Choosing Your Schedule and Your Grade. I also provide an explanation of my philosophy of grading for students who want to know why I take this approach.

HISTORY. I always used this points-based grading system, but I did not invent the Declarations until a momentous day in 2004. That was a game-changer for me. Before that, I used to spend a ridiculous amount of time recording the points in the Gradebook, and the students were sometimes frustrated that there would be a delay (sometimes even several days) between doing the work and seeing the points in the Gradebook. But then I realized I could hack a true-false quiz in order to let the students do that for themselves so they could see the points immediately, while also giving them much more responsibility for checking their own work. Better for them AND better for me! I'm pleased to say that there are other faculty at my school who have adopted this same "Declaration" system, and I am always happy when a student remarks in a blog post that they did Declarations in some other class they have taken.

GOALS. I have far too many goals here to list; the most important goals would be:

• Remove Myself. My main goal is to remove myself from the grading equation so that I can focus all my effort on providing personalized feedback (which I provide in abundance).
• Remove Stress. This is meant to be a completely stress-free grading system.
• Make It Flexible. Students can choose to get an A in the class, or a B, or a C; it's up to them.
• Make Students Responsible. The students are responsible for checking their own work with the text of the Declarations prompting them to check carefully.
• Be Clear. At any moment in the semester, students can see exactly where they stand.
• Be Objective about Grading. There is nothing subjective about any of the grading; it's a completely objective system (aside from the subjectiveness of the A-B-C-D-F scale itself). At the same time, there are no learning objectives; there are only learning "subjectives" (thanks to #Rhizo15 for this great term) meaning that this system allows the students to pursue their own learning paths and to set their own goals.

Proverb Laboratory:

Without curiosity, there is no wisdom.

(Polish: Bez ciekawości nie ma mądrości.)

Proofreading Skills Assessment

The first course element I thought I would discuss is the proofreading skills assessment that I do in the first week. It's not going first for any reason of importance, but simply because this morning I toted up the results for this semester and shared them at Google+, so it's something on my mind today. In this post, I will try to expand on and contextualize what I said in the G+ post.

Proofreading Skills Assessment

Brief Description. Students choose two stories (out of six) which contain numerous errors in spelling, punctuation, and sentence structure. Their task is to correct the piece of writing and send the corrected piece back to me via email. I then look at their corrections and send them back detailed comments via email.

Details. You can see the instructions provided to the student and the six stories here: Proofreading Practice. To get a sense of what kinds of proofreading skills I am trying to assess, take a look at one of the stories. Students struggle the most with the special punctuation rules for quoted speech (very important for narrative writing in this class), and, like everybody else, they struggle with the many different types of comma usage. Some students also have more basic problems to work on, such as the use of the apostrophe.

History. This is the fourth year I have done this assignment. For the first year, everybody did the Panchatantra story of the mouse-bride. The next year, I changed that to the Japanese fable of the stonecutter. Each student thus did the same story, and it was a story approximately 800 words long. Last year, I went for the "choose your own stories" option, with six stories that are each approximately 300 words long. Although the mouse-bride and the stonecutter were both excellent stories that I was glad to share with all the students, this choice-driven approach is much better. See below for more about that.

Grading. Like all work in my classes, this assignment is graded on a complete/incomplete basis. If students complete the assignment, they get 5 points. Because this assignment is part of the Orientation Week, students are required to complete the assignment; everyone completes this assignment and, if they miss the due date, they receive reminders from me until they do complete it. When they are done, the fill out the Declaration at D2L and the points are automatically recorded in the Gradebook.

Feedback. I have a set of "canned comments" which are able to address most of the errors which students either do not correct or which they correct incorrectly. I can also anticipate some of the errors that they will introduce on their own. At the same time, students provided unexpected responses to this assignment all the time, such as introducing new kinds of errors I've never seen before or completely rewriting a given sentence. That makes it interesting for me to read each of their papers. Even though they are writing on the same stories, it is not at all like grading a quiz. It is much more interesting! As a typical example of canned feedback, here is a sentence from the story that needs to be corrected:

Can't you tell there's a hurricane coming.

If a student does not add the question mark, I send back to them the uncorrected sentence plus my comment:

Can't you tell there's a hurricane coming. 

==> even though this is a rhetorical question, it still gets a question mark at the end: Can't you tell there's a hurricane coming?
(you can review rhetorical questions and other kinds of questions here:
http://writingwithaesop.blogspot.com/2010/08/questions-direct-indirect-and-rhetorical.html)

Depending on the number of comments I need to return to a student, marking one of these might take 10 minutes or it might take 20 minutes, or perhaps more. Overall, then, it takes me anywhere from 15-20 hours to mark and return these assignments, but I consider it time well spent (for the many reasons why, see "goals" below). In another post, I will say something about the language I use in communicating about writing problems with students, trying very hard to emphasize the positive steps they can take to make improvements. That will be a topic for a later post!

Results. Every semester, the results are pretty much the same: there is a more or less smooth continuum that ranges from just one or two errors to thirty or more efforts. No really significant clusters, just a continuous range of performance. That is a huge challenge for me as a teacher, but one that I welcome: I aspire to make this class a valuable writing experience for every single student across that whole range. In a classroom, I don't know how I would respond to that challenge, but by teaching online, I can work with each student individually on their writing every week. Here are the results I compiled for Fall 2014, showing the same pattern that I see every semester:

The numbers per se are not important and do not justify any kind of detailed analysis. Since the assignment is open-ended (some students introduce a lot of new errors!), there is no "maximum" number of mistakes to use in assigning any kind of percentage score.

Also, when a student is struggling, I do not mark all the items that I might mark for a student with strong proofreading skills. For example, I do advocate the use of comma before a conjunction that joins two independent clauses, and that is something I point out to a student with strong proofreading skills. If, however, a student is having basic problems with other punctuation usage, I don't worry about pointing out this particular comma usage. So, for those students with more than 15 errors or so, their actual error count would be higher if this assignment were graded by a machine. But it is not graded by a machine, and it could not be graded by a machine. That is a very important topic, and one far too big to explore in this blog post... but I promise to come back to that later. I'll even create a draft post now to remind me to do so!

Goals. This exercise has many goals. I will not call them learning objectives (ugh, I am not a big fan of that term at all)... but "goals" sounds good to me! Here are what I consider my top five goals for this assignment:

• Learning experience for me. This assignment gives me a lot of insight into the students' writing in general. Because the assignment is open-ended in nature, every semester I see new results — new corrections that the students devise, and also new mistakes that they introduce into the text). When the assignment ceases to be a learning experience for me, I will come up with something different, but clearly I still have lots to learn about the kinds of errors students are prone to make. It gives me a chance to review and expand as needed the writing support materials I provide here: Writing Laboratory.
• Wake up call for students. This assignment lets the students know that I really will be working with them on the formal aspects of their writing. The class may be a total free-for-all in terms of creative subject matter, but it will not be a free-for-all in terms of punctuation and spelling. For many students, this is the first time they have ever received word-by-word, sentence-by-sentence feedback on a piece of writing. They also learn to get used to the way in which I return comments in plain text, with my comments inserted and marked with ==> (see example above).
• Areas for improvement. The assignment also alerts students to the specific problem areas in their writing. When they start doing some writing for their class projects in Week 4, I ask them to look back at this assignment as they define their own proofreading and revision strategies. So, I don't worry too much if students only glance at this feedback now because they will be revisiting it again later. If, however, they do use this as an occasion to start reviewing these topics, so much the better!
• No punitive grading. The grading for this assignments demonstrates to the students that writing deficits are not going to be penalized; instead, they will be treated as learning opportunities. This is not about red ink, not about grading — it's about learning. Everyone gets the same number of points for this assignment, and they declare those points for themselves when they turn it in. I return feedback only; I do not grade. Also, as mentioned above, I try to couch my feedback in very positive, proactive, empowering terms, emphasizing what the students can do to improve their writing. I promise to write more on that important topic later!
• Story variety. In its current form, the assignment introduces the students to the kinds of stories that they will be reading in these classes, and it also introduces them to the idea of making choices, which is a fundamental part of the class design overall. From my perspective, it is so cool to see how all the stories get chosen every semester, and I really enjoy reading the comments the students make about the stories themselves. It provides an occasion to make some person-to-person connections as I learn more about what kinds of stories they enjoy and why.

General Thoughts:

As the long list of goals might suggest, this is an assignment that I consider to be very important. I want to continue working on this assignment to improve it if I can, but I would also say that the assignment is working very well at this time, helping me to achieve all the goals listed above. Because there are several other writing assignments in the Orientation Week, students realize that not all of their writing is going to be scrutinized in this way (that would be crazy-making, both for them and for me!), but I will be giving them feedback on their class project in the same way that I provide feedback here. The difference, of course, is that when I give them feedback on their own writing, most of my feedback is about the content of the writing. At the same time, I want to prepare them for the feedback they will receive on the formal elements of their writing too — not because they will be punished for it in terms of the grade, but so that they can learn to master some of the rules of written English that, for whatever reasons, they have not mastered thus far. 

Since I teach mostly college seniors, this class may in fact be the last opportunity these students will have to master those rules of formal written English. Sadly, very few college faculty work with their students on writing mechanics and proofreading, which means the students get very little feedback and reinforcement for any of the skills I am trying to foster in this class. There are many reasons why most faculty don't work on the nitty-gritty of writing with their students: perhaps they don't have time, and/or they might be scornful of students who don't already have these skills, and/or they could be applying these skills unconsciously but without the ability to articulate them consciously. In some cases, the faculty might not even have the skills themselves to begin with — believe me, after working for several years in the editorial office of a prestigious academic journal, I've seen it all! 

For me, personally, I cannot imagine not trying to engage with students in this way. I love to read the stories that they write, but at the same time I do notice — I cannot help but notice — the problems they often have with written English. That is a topic that extends to the whole writing process that I try to promote in my classes, though, so I will wrap this up here, and I promise that this larger topic of formal writing instruction is going to come up again and again in future posts!