My first attempt at ungrading

I've been inspired by Jesse Stommel's discussion of ungrading, including the paradigm-shattering work of Alfie Kohn. The idea that grades can sometimes be a deterrent for hard work, and that grades are the external justification that overwhelms any intrinsic motivation our students could bring to our classes persuaded me to try ungrading in one of my online courses.
 
I also think that students sometimes feel like I determine their final grade in some mysterious conjuring, no matter how explicit and transparent I try to make that process (including providing them a spreadsheet that they can fill in to compute their final grade). I want my students to own their grade, and more than that, I want them to own their learning. I see ungrading as a way for them to not only own their learning, but actually think prospectively about what they intend to get out of my courses. I try to tell them early on what is on offer in my courses, and they get to decide how much of that they want to obtain. Rather than say "do these things and you'll get these outcomes" as I have said many times, ungrading puts the responsibility entirely on the students. They should think "here's what I could get from this course, now how much of that do I want to get?"

The way I've ungraded is to tell my students that they will tell me their final grade, and I will absolutely accept that grade (with just a few exceptions, see below). The 'catch' is that they have to provide me with a justification for that grade, based on what they have done in the course. Here are my instructions I gave them:

I want you to propose your final grade following this procedure: gather the evidence available to you, analyze/summarize it, and write your proposal. Here’s the evidence you can use:

• Average quiz score
• Average Group Discussion Board scores
• Average score on the Perusall readings
• Evolution of your learning process based on entries in your Learning Journal
• Professionalism. Have you completed all assignments/activities, and on time?
• Indications that this class has affected you and your life
• Other information that you believe is relevant to your performance

Format: the format you use is up to you. In general you can think about this proposal in this way: “I deserve a(n) ___ for the final grade in this course because…”
It is now nearly 8 weeks after the beginning of our class together. As a reminder, here are the goals I had for our class:

• You will understand the world more accurately
• You will understand psychology from a different perspective
• You will get to know your classmates
• You will see the world in a new way

Keep those goals in mind as you consider all the evidence at your disposal and decide what grade you deserve in our class. I would love to hear how this class has accomplished these four goals.

There are only two reasons I would chose your final grade instead of you choosing: 1) if you lie to me I will give you an F (lying is a violation of the EKU's Academic Integrity Policy), and 2) if you don't submit a grade and a justification I will give you an F. Except for those two situations I will absolutely submit whatever grade you propose to me. I promise.

Two things are worth mentioning in the instructions. 1) The last two sources of evidence, the indications that the class has affected their life, and other relevant information are in some ways the most critical. Affecting my students is the most important thing to me, so I really want students to focus on that. If they describe how my course has affected them in meaningful ways, then I really don't care about the other metrics. And students in my online courses often have many other demands on their time and attention, and I refuse to ignore those demands because they certainly cannot. 2) I take my promises to students very seriously, including (especially) the promise to accept their proposed grade. The two exceptions are also critical, for different reasons. Academic integrity is always important, and I think this exception rule makes academic integrity real for the students. The second exception communicates how seriously I take these grade proposals and justifications, and forces students to reflect on their engagement in my course. 

You might be now wondering about students proposing grades that don't accurately reflect their performance in the course. I would have shared your skepticism in the past. But I'm trying to trust students more, and that means I trust them to be fair and as objective as they can be when thinking about their performance in my courses, and their grade. However, when talking about ungrading with colleagues I almost always get a question about this issue. So here are some data to consider:

Grade based on points	A					42
	B				5	13
	C			0	5	4
	D		0	3	0	1
	F	0	0	0	1	0
		F	D	C	B	A
		Proposed grade

These numbers are from one of my online courses that provided students with plenty of feedback in points, like quiz scores, reading engagement scores (from Perusall), and group discussion board posts. So they and I could easily see how they were doing based on the points in the course, but as the instructions above indicate, they could consider other factors as well when proposing and justifying their final grade. 

Numbers in the dark green boxes represent the number of students who proposed the same grade they would had gotten if objective grading was used, based on points earned in the course. Numbers in the lighter green boxes represent students who proposed a grade higher than the objective grade. 47 of 74 (64%) proposed an “accurate” grade, 27 of 74 (36%) “inflated” their grade. 

I am quite happy with these data. There are likely some free-riders in there. Doesn’t bother me. They have really only cheated themselves out of the benefits of increased engagement in my course.

Change we must

Lately I have changed the way I think about the goals for my classes. Like many professors, I used to think my primary goal was to get my students to learn the content of my courses, and all of my efforts to refine my courses focused on this goal. But three nagging facts kept bothering me until I had to finally accept them all, and then accept that I had to change the ways I taught my classes. The first fact is the research on the long-term retention of college course material. While this scholarship is not extensive or without flaws, the consistent finding is depressing: after as little as 6 months students perform only slightly better on assessments of their knowledge than students who have not taken the class. The second fact is that students come to college because they believe that doing so will prepare them for a job and/or career. The third fact is that employers have long been telling us that skills are as important to them as knowledge, if not more so (this is sometimes called the skills gap). So if you put all three facts together it sounds like this: what we think we’re doing (teaching content), we’re not; and what our students and their future employers want, we’re not giving them. Here’s another fact to consider: decreases in state support mean we are more reliant on tuition. If we are not giving our students what they want and need for life after graduation potential students will look to cheaper and faster alternatives, threatening our very existence. I owe it to my students to make my courses as beneficial as possible.

Here’s what that means to me: I must design my courses with the goal of deep learning that will stay with my students for the rest of their life (not just the next exam), and I must move skills development from the periphery to the center of my courses. The long-term retention findings force me to use my expertise to curate the information and emphasize the most important ideas. This absolutely means that I cover less information in my courses, but the content I do cover has a better chance of changing the students. The skills gap forced me to use problem-based learning in one of my courses. Students work in small groups (teamwork, leadership) to solve problems (critical thinking/problem solving) and then present their work to the class (communication). We spend a considerable amount of course time addressing these skills, not because I tell them we have to, but because they are necessary to solve problems. They use the content of the course as the lens through which they see and understand the problems, and the source of solutions as well.

We cannot afford (literally) to approach our teaching the same way we always have in the academy. What our students want and need has changed, the economics and marketplace of higher education has changed, and the availability of information has changed. If we do not adapt to these changes we will maintain ourselves out of relevance and existence.