For this last meeting on Dec 3, 2021 @ 12:40 we discussed Chapter 7: “Contract Grading and Peer Review” by Christina Katopodis and Cathy N. Davidson, Chapter 9: A STEM Ungrading Case Study: A Reflection on First-Time Implementation in Organic Chemistry” by Clarissa Sorensen-Unruh, and Chapter 10: “The Point-less Classroom: A Math Teacher’s Ironic Choice in Not Calculating Grades” by Gary Chu.

The notes you find here are a combination of paraphrased snippets from our conversation, individuals’ ideas, some specific quotes, and questions members were mulling over.

At this last meeting of the semester, we talked about where we currently seem to land on ungrading and how we might conceptualize some kind of ungrading schemes in our own classes. I think we all agree that ungrading requires a lot of work and much more feedback, reflection, and one-on-one conferencing between student and the professor. While we know these are high impact and high quality practices, the most daunting part of ungrading appears to be the increased workload. In our institutional context, it can take much longer and more energy to evaluate/asses students through ungrading assessment practices. Many of us anticipate difficulty:

• Getting student buy-in (1. to unlearn conventional A-F grading 2. to see that the experience is beneficial to their learning and not a professor’s abdication of responsibility).
• Scaling the design and attention required in the ungrading classrooms, especially in classes with a lot of students. Some ungrading practices seemed very nuanced and precise, with clauses and stipulations in “grading contracts” that could be hard to keep track of.
• Getting students to fully understand the purpose of the course and the outcomes/objectives students in the course are guided to meet.
• Forcing something the college is not set up for or set up to support.
• Keep students motivated in a course that doesn’t expect them to get an A.

We appreciated that Sorensen-Unruh, in her reflection on experimenting with ungrading in her upper-level chem course, included critical challenges she faced in the process. She also gave us some interesting ideas about what ungrading might look like in non-humantities courses. Chapters from Davidson/Katopodis, Sorensun-Unruh and Chu (plus earlier chapters) moved us to really define “ungrading”–many of us see that the ungrading practices authors applied did not eliminate grades altogether (you can’t when the institution and everything around its orbit uses them) or reduce instructor presence, guidance and involvement. Rather, ungrading merely removes the traditional grading practice we are all used to and challenges us to think about how we share power with students; how we collaborate with student and involve students in their own learning; how we guide students toward the goal of learning and understanding over striving for letter grades that don’t tell students very much.

As we wrapped up this last meeting of the semester, we talked a bit about how we might start applying ungrading or the sort of work we want to undertake around ungrading.

• Beginning to see how ungrading might receive systematic and institutional support.  Some faculty told us that they have already introduced ungrading at a department equity committee meeting. Folks on the committee seemed really interested and ready to implement right away. These faculty are considering applying for a grant to fund PD on ungrading for their department.
• Meeting students where they are. Rather than aiming for students to achieve mastery and expect everyone to meet the same standard set for the course, one faculty member thought about how they might push their students even further to either meet the standard or surpass the standard. This might look like personalizing feedback to students.
• Reframing a successful semester–reconciling meeting students where they are and getting them to grow.
• Collaborating more with students (e.g. co-constructing a rubric for a final project together or show students the power of the discussion and group objections)
• Consider building certain ungrading practices into the class from the beginning so students become comfortable with certain practices. For instance, Sorensen-Unruh shares her experience with students ignoring her feedback and claiming full points without actually showing mastery in the content. To dissuade students from doing this, she added a rule that students could ignore her feedback if they provided a thought-out  justification with evidence to support their decision.
• Create a manageable drafting process–one that maybe builds something new into each draft. Students don’t want to draft the same thing eight times, but they will aim to make their work better at least twice. Question this–consider why students are reluctant to draft as many times as they need to in order to reach a certain place.
• Adding an emoji scale to quizzes, tests, and reflections was also popular (Sorensen-Unruh). Other found the team leader peer-assessment model interesting (Davidson and Katopodis).
• Permission to take a beat and reflect before we make any final decisions and model this contemplative practice for students.

The FIG will resume in the spring 2022 and continue reading the book.