Ungrading in the time of COVID-19

Here's the communication I sent out to my Introduction to Psychology students after my school announced that classes were going to pivot (transition) to online delivery. Some context: we just discussed ungrading in the (now we know) final in-person class just before spring break. So students knew something about ungrading and what I was thinking about at the time.

Hello my friends—

First, I want to remind you that our class should NOT be your priority now. Focus on taking care of yourself and those around you. Stay home as much as possible, wash your hands, drink lots of water. And don’t forget the lessons from our class: get enough sleep and pay attention to your mental health. Maybe now is a chance to check out the meditation apps I talked about (HeadSpace, Waking up, 10% Happier). There’s also a great podcast called The Happiness Lab that I find very helpful.

Second, I hope you heard that there will no more in-person, on campus classes for the rest of the semester. I actually anticipated that decision, so what is described below will work for the remainder of the Spring 2020 semester.

Third, I want to tell you the results of the survey about ungrading: 40 of you responded to the survey, and 75% of you want to switch to ungrading and 25% want to stay with our class as it was. So we will do the ungrading thing.

Of course the changes caused by COVID-19 complicates our plan. Our switch to ungrading will actually make dealing with this mess a little easier. Here’s why: traditional courses have requirements, but ungraded classes have opportunities. So the overall plan is to lay out all the opportunities for you to learn about psychology, and then you choose which ones you want to do. At the end of the semester you will tell me what grade you deserve and explain why you think you deserve that grade. The explanation can include many types of information from many sources. *More on that below.

I think there are two important things that we were accomplishing in our course up to this point: 1) we were discovering the topics, ideas, and findings of psychology, and 2) we were getting to know each other – you, me, each other. I value both. Accomplishing the first goal will be pretty easy in our new format, but the second goal is harder. Fortunately, this is something I have spent a ton of time trying to figure out in my online courses. The answer is something called Perusall, and it’s a way to both explore psychology and interact with your classmates (and me and the TAs) at the same time.

The text. Perusall is a (free) social annotation service that allows you to ask questions

about and comment on electronic texts. Using Perusall is a mix between a discussion board and social media. While looking at the text, you can ask and answer questions and make comments (annotations) – and other people can see your annotations. Essentially you can have a conversation with other people while looking at a text. You can even target your comments at particular people by using @ like in many social media sites. I have used Perusall in both online and in-person courses, and students have mostly enjoyed and benefitted from Perusall. Students find the interface very familiar and intuitive. I have arranged for us to be able to access our textbook on the Perusall platform, all within Blackboard, for no additional cost (this was not easy to arrange). So I can create links on Blackboard for each group of sections in the text that I have listed in the schedule at the end of the syllabus, and when you click on the link you will be taken to our text in the Perusall platform and then be able to have a conversation with the other members of class while reading those sections. A neat thing is that Perusall keeps track of your interactions with the text and thus you would be able to use that information (if you wish) in your explanation for your final grade.

So essentially the interactions you have on Perusall take the place of the jigsaws we did during class. Perusall accomplishes both of the goals I mentioned above:

• discover psychology
• interact with each other

I made a demo/walkthru video about Perusall. It’s on Blackboard.

The jigsaws. I don’t know of a way to do the jigsaws online, and I’ve really tried to figure out a way to do them online. It just doesn’t work nearly as well as in-person. But what I can do is give you all the jigsaw questions that we would have worked on, and you can answer them if you wish, on your own. You can find a document with all the jigsaw questions on Blackboard. I also created a ‘journal’ on Blackboard where you could paste all of your responses to the jigsaw questions.

The quizzes. I also believe in the benefit of taking the quizzes. As I’ve said many times in class, the quizzes are not about finding out how well you know the material, they are really about helping you learn the material. So I will keep the quizzes on Blackboard, with a few modifications. I will open them ALL up and take the passwords off them, that way you can take them as you wish, in any order, and you can still repeat them as many times as you want. No late penalties. The two short answer questions will be changed to apply to the content of the quizzes, not the content of our class sessions.

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So here are the opportunities to learn about psychology I have set up for you:

1.  Engage with the text and your classmates on Perusall
2. Solidify your knowledge by answering the jigsaw questions
3. Solidify your knowledge with the quizzes

I strongly believe that knowing more about psychology will improve your life, and the more you know the more improvement you will achieve. There’s a lot of great stuff ahead of us, including chapters on intelligence, personality, human development, and best of all, social psychology! Reading the text and interacting with your classmates on Perusall, answering the jigsaw questions, and taking the quizzes will help you learn more about psychology and thus improve your life.

*Final grade. You have to submit to me at the end of the semester a grade declaration and explanation for that grade. Your explanation could contain any combination of the following information:

• attendance and quiz scores from before spring break, available on Blackboard
• your engagement with the text on Perusall, either time spent on Perusall, number of annotations you make, and/or score Perusall gives you based on your annotations
• quiz scores from now on
• any work you do on the jigsaw questions
• factors outside our course that affected your engagement in our class, like your mental and physical health, jobs, family obligations, stress from COVID-19, etc.

And most importantly – and I really mean this is the most important thing –

• How this class has improved your life. All the other things are less important to me than this last thing.

You can determine your final grade in any way you think is appropriate. If you want to use just the points, go ahead. If you want to focus mostly on the way this class has improved your life, that’s great too. Any combination that you think is appropriate is acceptable. From this moment on, I want this to be your primary, all-consuming focus in our class: how can I improve my life by engaging in this class.

How many and which things you do is up to you, especially during this pandemic crisis. I regret that COVID-19 will almost certainly mean you will get less benefit out of this class because of all the stress and disruption the virus is causing. But that’s not your fault and I don’t want to punish you for it by requiring you to do a bunch of work, no matter how beneficial I think that work is. I am trying to lay out the rest of the topics in our class before you, buffet style. You can pick and choose which ideas/topics you want to explore, and pause or stop when you’ve had enough. I leave that decision entirely up to you.

• You don’t have to read all the sections of the text on Perusall
• You don’t have to answer all the jigsaw
• You don’t have to take all the quizzes

What you do is up to you.

I’m going to miss seeing you all on Mondays and Wednesdays! But I’m very grateful that we had the face-to-face time that we did, and especially that we had that conversation on the Wednesday before spring break. Of course I am still available on email. I can even arrange to talk to you via phone or video call if you wish – I would love that! Let me know.

Stay safe, take this pandemic seriously, and take care of each other. We’ll get through this and get back to normal before too long. Hang in there.

Dr. Winslow

TA Team: Shelby Baker, Cara Copeland, Merhan Elramahi, Gabriel Gomez, Maya Gulliford, Katelyn Hamblin, Haley Ingram

P.S. We’re still working out the details on the Outside Activity Credits. Stay tuned.

P.P.S. You don’t need to do anything until March 23, but you can if you want to.