'I No Longer Grade My Students' Work -- And I Wish I Had Stopped Sooner' (theconversation.com) 346
"I've been teaching college English for more than 30 years," writes Elisabeth Gruner, a professor of English at the University of Richmond. "Four years ago, I stopped putting grades on written work, and it has transformed my teaching and my students' learning. My only regret is that I didn't do it sooner."
The practice she's adopted is called "ungrading," where students are given formative rather than summative feedback. "At the end of the semester they submit a portfolio of revised work, along with an essay reflecting on and evaluating their learning," writes Gruner. "Like most people who ungrade, I reserve the right to change the grade that students assign themselves in that evaluation. But I rarely do, and when I do, I raise grades almost as often as I lower them." Here's here reasoning (via The Conversation): I stopped putting grades on written work for three related reasons -- all of which other professors have also cited as concerns. First, I wanted my students to focus on the feedback I provided on their writing. I had a sense, since backed up by research, that when I put a grade on a piece of writing, students focused solely on that. Removing the grade forced students to pay attention to my comments.
Second, I was concerned with equity. For almost 10 years I have been studying inclusive pedagogy, which focuses on ensuring that all students have the resources they need to learn. My studies confirmed my sense that sometimes what I was really grading was a student's background. Students with educational privilege came into my classroom already prepared to write A or B papers, while others often had not had the instruction that would enable them to do so. The 14 weeks they spent in my class could not make up for the years of educational privilege their peers had enjoyed.
Third, and I admit this is selfish: I hate grading. I love teaching, though, and giving students feedback is teaching. I am happy to do it. Freed from the tyranny of determining a grade, I wrote meaningful comments, suggested improvements, asked questions and entered into a dialogue with my students that felt more productive -- that felt, in short, more like an extension of the classroom.
The practice she's adopted is called "ungrading," where students are given formative rather than summative feedback. "At the end of the semester they submit a portfolio of revised work, along with an essay reflecting on and evaluating their learning," writes Gruner. "Like most people who ungrade, I reserve the right to change the grade that students assign themselves in that evaluation. But I rarely do, and when I do, I raise grades almost as often as I lower them." Here's here reasoning (via The Conversation): I stopped putting grades on written work for three related reasons -- all of which other professors have also cited as concerns. First, I wanted my students to focus on the feedback I provided on their writing. I had a sense, since backed up by research, that when I put a grade on a piece of writing, students focused solely on that. Removing the grade forced students to pay attention to my comments.
Second, I was concerned with equity. For almost 10 years I have been studying inclusive pedagogy, which focuses on ensuring that all students have the resources they need to learn. My studies confirmed my sense that sometimes what I was really grading was a student's background. Students with educational privilege came into my classroom already prepared to write A or B papers, while others often had not had the instruction that would enable them to do so. The 14 weeks they spent in my class could not make up for the years of educational privilege their peers had enjoyed.
Third, and I admit this is selfish: I hate grading. I love teaching, though, and giving students feedback is teaching. I am happy to do it. Freed from the tyranny of determining a grade, I wrote meaningful comments, suggested improvements, asked questions and entered into a dialogue with my students that felt more productive -- that felt, in short, more like an extension of the classroom.
Evergreen State (Score:2)
Do you want the Evergreen State College? Because this is how you get the Evergreen State College.
Re: Evergreen State (Score:2)
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Do you want the Evergreen State College? Because this is how you get the Evergreen State College.
Except you do not get grades at evergreen, you get an evaluation of the professor of everything you did right, but more frequently what you did wrong.
In my experience (both at evergreen and elsewhere) grades are kinder. One person I know has "Got through by sheer dumb luck" on their transcript.
https://www.evergreen.edu/ [evergreen.edu]
What a waste of time (Score:3)
I'm not here to entertain some lazy college professor who doesn't feel like grading.
I do my best work the first time. Constantly being told to revise something that isn't wrong is a fucking waste of time.
In real life once you hit send on the email it is sent. School should prepare you in the same way.
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Are you kidding?
Very few things in real life cannot be revised. What are you even talking about?
Go ahead , show us (Score:3)
> > In real life once you hit send on the email it is sent.
> Are you kidding?
> Very few things in real life cannot be revised. What are you even talking about?
Okay, go ahead and revise that. Make it say something similar, with different wording. I'll wait.
Today I've written probably a hundred things.
Emails, Discord messages, Teams messages, mms texts.
Of all the things I've written today, I can come back a few weeks later and change it before anyone reads it for zero percent of those. Nothing I
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That's nice you. Doesn't apply to everyone though.
The rest of us are able to improve our writing by revision, to make it clearer and more concise. You probably could too, if you cared to.
It's a pity you didn't take this guy's class (Score:2)
In a humanities course when you have hard and fast grades your job is a student is to figure out the right words to get the highest grade out of your teacher. You are literally there for the sole purpose of pleasing them. There's no point in you understanding anything or thinking about anything except how you can get your teacher to read your pape
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Re: What a waste of time (Score:2)
Woke and selfish. (Score:2, Flamebait)
This lazy, selfish teacher is using the current woke blather to justify doing less work and avoiding the stress of telling students that they aren't making it. Equity in education? Give me a break. Everybody deserves the same opportunities, but they definitely do not deserve the same outcomes. Inclusive pedagogy? "Ungrading"? Some education PhD was scraping the bottom of the barrel to come up with this stuff.
Re: Woke and selfish. (Score:2)
Writing feedback is more work than grading. If what you get from this is "lazy" then you are missing the point.
Grades are a reflection of th teaching methodology (Score:2)
Objective grading out the window? (Score:4, Insightful)
My expectation for a college class is that the grades the professor assigns students at the end of the class are an objective reflection of their mastery of the material in that class. If the students are well-prepared and don't need to learn much from the class, fantastic, they can easily get A or B grades on their papers. If the students aren't well-prepared and don't even have the foundation to learn the material, _they should not be in the class to begin with_. Ideally a professor works with their counselor to guide them to a foundational class, but I expect that in most larger universities it rarely works out that way.
It almost sounds like this professor is starting to assign grades to students lacking foundational material based on how much they learn rather than objective criteria. That does a disservice to the student and the university that employs that professor - the student appears (on paper) to be able to perform in the workplace, but actually cannot, and the university's reputation is damaged when prospective employers interview that student and discover that they weren't educated to the expected level.
We all get it. There children that have huge advantages and children that have huge disadvantages. Trying to fix it at the college level is like trying to fix a crumbling Egyptian pyramid when you have three bricks left to place. Fixing it properly requires a lot of time, money, and societal investment _at the birth date of the child_ in order to ensure everyone has the same opportunities. While I would personally prefer to see many more social programs supporting children (the Finnish model in particular seems to work well) I think there are too many narrowly-focused people with too much apathy toward forming a health society to actually _vote_ for something like that.
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It almost sounds like this professor is starting to assign grades to students lacking foundational material based on how much they learn rather than objective criteria.
Where are you getting that? As far as I can tell you just made that part up.
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It almost sounds like this professor is starting to assign grades to students lacking foundational material based on how much they learn rather than objective criteria.
Where are you getting that? As far as I can tell you just made that part up.
The fact that she states that her new method of "grading" tries to address the "equity" of her lesser privileged students' educational deficit...
I stopped putting grades on written work for three related reasons -- [...]
The 14 weeks they spent in my class could not make up for the years of educational privilege their peers had enjoyed.
Nothing can make up for years of inadequate education other than additional years of adequate education.
And if she has a method of teaching inadequately educated students more quickly, then adequately educated students could also benefit, so it still doesn't solve the historical equity problem. And the unfortunate answer is that it's a problem that can't be solved
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The fact that she states that her new method of "grading" tries to address the "equity" of her lesser privileged students' educational deficit...
Sure and she does this as the summary says, by allowing them to continue to revise their papers until the end of the semester thus giving them time to catch up.
Nothing can make up for years of inadequate education other than additional years of adequate education.
How long it takes for a student to catch up has to do with how far behind a student is and that will be different for every student but if they made it into college they cant be that far behind. Furthermore, if they are actually that far behind there's nothing here that indicates that the teacher passes them. As far as I've read that's something you'
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>>It almost sounds like this professor is starting to assign grades to students lacking foundational material based on how much they learn rather than objective criteria.
>Where are you getting that? As far as I can tell you just made that part up.Maybe here:
"Second, I was concerned with equity... Students with educational privilege came into my classroom already prepared to write A or B papers, while others often had not had the instruction that would enable them to do so. The 14 weeks they spent
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As for my interest in equity, I found that students who were less well prepared did indeed develop their skills; their growth was substantial, and both they and I recognized it.
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It doesn't follow that she then gave them an A. What she did was remove the stigma of low grades at every essay, so they could focus more on the material and the feedback, and learn from it. They may well have been more engaged and able to write better essays by the end, and earned the C they assigned themselves and she verified.
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>She basically says they're good by the end of the class ... because they had a chance to learn and develop...
No, no she doesn't. From her own statements:
"The 14 weeks they spent in my class could not make up for the years of educational privilege their peers had enjoyed".
So where are you getting your assertion again?
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It almost sounds like this professor is starting to assign grades to students lacking foundational material based on how much they learn rather than objective criteria. That does a disservice to the student and the university that employs that professor - the student appears (on paper) to be able to perform in the workplace, but actually cannot, and the university's reputation is damaged when prospective employers interview that student and discover that they weren't educated to the expected level.
I think you may have misread the article, he's assigning grades based upon a "Final revised portfolio" the fact he is making the students jump through a hoop of grading themselves and him approving it doesn't change this fact. The benefit to this style grading is that if a student lakes the "foundational material" they can incorporate it into their final portfolio rather than making mistakes in the early assignments and having affect their final grade. So what is happening is throughout the semester student
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My expectation for a college class is that the grades the professor assigns students at the end of the class are an objective reflection of their mastery of the material in that class.
My expectation is that the students learn and develop as much as possible, and if this approach succeeds in that I'd like to find a way to make it work.
If the students are well-prepared and don't need to learn much from the class, fantastic, they can easily get A or B grades on their papers.
That sounds like a terrible idea. You're just wasting a bunch of time for both the student and teacher.
Wouldn't it be better to structure the class so both the under prepared and well prepared students learn as much as they can?
I do think that's a real problem where a student comes in with the ability to write an 'A' paper and it becomes very difficult for t
So nice to not teach comprehensive isn't it (Score:2)
Even at a liberal arts university she gets a pre-selection of relatively high aptitude, high discipline students.
Non comprehensive education is easy mode, comprehensive is nightmare mode.
Good (Score:2)
If you're here on
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Yeah...I think the horse has left the barn with regards to tens of millions of people not being able to think their way out of a paper bag. I mean, seriously, Trump got elected. I rest my case.
Human beings have these things called children (Score:2)
Critical thinking? (Score:2)
Could you at least read my post (Score:2)
And on the subject of everyone gets a trophy, the concept is a well understood and extremely valuable education tool that you and your ignorance do not understand because you are not a trained educator.
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There are no right or wrong answers with the humanities.
True, but there are objective writing standards, and correct spelling is purely objective. "The humanities" is an extremely broad category, but at the foundation of it all is the written word, and that can be graded and corrected and improved. The refusal to assign a letter grade is the loss of one piece of feedback in a discipline that benefits more than most from having as much feedback as possible.
In truth, the lack of a letter grade isn't what matters most here. It's the ability to submit revisions,
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The refusal to assign a letter grade is the loss of one piece of feedback in a discipline that benefits more than most from having as much feedback as possible.
In truth, the lack of a letter grade isn't what matters most here. It's the ability to submit revisions, something that I remember being able to do in high school, and something which should figure much more prominently in writing instruction.
Nailed it.
My first college english class had a professor who was an extremely tough and pedantic grader, but who would allow us as many revisions to our papers as we wanted (limited by how fast she could turn the re-graded papers around of course). If you went the zero effort route, you could generally turn in a paper and go up a letter grade just by retyping it with the red marks (red! the horror!) fixed. And if you actually read the feedback, thought about it for 5 minutes, and then maybe asked some qu
That's fine if you have a kid (Score:2)
I think the one of the big problems we have is that if someone isn't putting in 110% effort we want them to just go fuck off and die. It's that puritanical obsession with work where you're only value as a human being is how hard you're willing to work. They changed the name of the hust
Why don't you delete your account? (Score:2)
More importantly to address your first point if the teacher has a student who can't do basic spelling and grammar do you think failing that stude
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Watch what the super wealthy do with their kids. They make damn sure their kids can think critically.
How do you know so much about what super wealthy do with their kids?
She's not doing the students any favors (Score:2, Interesting)
Students with educational privilege came into my classroom already prepared to write A or B papers, while others often had not had the instruction that would enable them to do so. The 14 weeks they spent in my class could not make up for the years of educational privilege their peers had enjoyed.
So, she decided to just pass them all like every teacher in their lives before her did, regardless of whether they learned anything or really could write a proper paper or not. This, instead of pointing out the s
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That's not how I took it. She dropped the letter grades, but a page full of red ink detailing what exactly you did wrong is still a page full of red ink. The next draft will be better.
By the end of class the quality of the first drafts should be markedly better.
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Basically yes. But if the improvement doesn't happen I guess so shouldn't the improved marks. Starting with the premise that some students come into university ready to write A papers and some don't ... so what? I mean sure it sucks there's bad schools out there, that some kids have to work to help support their families or english as a second language or many other possible reasons. But at the end of the day: can the kid write an A paper?
Fine if she pushes off the evaluation to the final just I hope she is
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Editing an email doesn't take a week. Even a few minutes will help improve your writing.
If you are drafting contract clauses I sure hope you review them carefully!
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A lifetime of learning doesn't get replaced by a few minutes of editing. I doesn't matter how carefully you review if you haven't picked up the skills.
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Basically yes. But if the improvement doesn't happen I guess so shouldn't the improved marks. Starting with the premise that some students come into university ready to write A papers and some don't ... so what? I mean sure it sucks there's bad schools out there, that some kids have to work to help support their families or english as a second language or many other possible reasons. But at the end of the day: can the kid write an A paper?
Who cares if they can write an A paper?
It's not math or science with a clear right or wrong answer. There's a sliding scale of quality starting with Trump and ending with Shakespeare.
English 101, 201, .. 501 it's all just arbitrary bounds on that sliding scale. That 'A paper' from High School is a B or C in 101 and a meeting with the prof in 401.
The problem with grading is if you're remotely objective the under-prepared student comes in and feels helpless due to everything they're missing, and the over-prep
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I attended high school in the UK until 1975. At my school, we got a grade like this B2
The B referred to the quality of the work, and the 2 to the level of effort put in. (A is best, 1 is most effort)
(I always aspired to an A3, but only ever managed an A2 once, in physics, but I digress).
Sanity... (Score:2)
In sane fields like say electronics, programming, or even medicine when you test something and it fails, you figure out what when wrong, attempt to fix it, and test or examine the patient again.
In academia, when you test someone and they fail, you...mark them as failed and move on.
It's so bizarre. Once you see it, you can't unsee the insanity of it.
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you figure out what when wrong, attempt to fix it, and test or examine the patient again.
In some cases, you can't fix it. Or the patient dies. Either way, that thing failed irrevocably.
In academia, when you test someone and they fail, you...mark them as failed and move on.
The professor's goal - improvement - is laudable. And in an English composition class that is ill defined, that's fine.
But if the class has specific goals, you test to those goals. And if the person (part, patient) fails those goals, they fail. If they pass the goals, they succeed. If you instead pass them based on 'improvement', you have voided the purposes of testing at all.
The only way you could rescue t
Ok, I'll step on the third rail (Score:2)
Second, I was concerned with equity. For almost 10 years I have been studying inclusive pedagogy, which focuses on ensuring that all students have the resources they need to learn. My studies confirmed my sense that sometimes what I was really grading was a student's background. Students with educational privilege came into my classroom already prepared to write A or B papers, while others often had not had the instruction that would enable them to do so. The 14 weeks they spent in my class could not make up for the years of educational privilege their peers had enjoyed.
Students who lack the educational background to write A and B papers shouldn't be in your class in the first place, and Elisabeth Gruner tacitly admits it right there. "The 14 weeks they spent in my class could not make up for the years [prior]." Yeah, no kidding.
American colleges and universities have been obsessed with taking it upon themselves to try to fix education when it's far too late by the time students are arriving at their door. The problem happened a decade before they ever got the undereduc
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That won't ever happen, despite it being a good idea. Pool all money for education and redistribute it.
Of course, if you did that, you would probably see even more people leave public schooling for private, further accelerating the demise of our failed public school system.
We had a good thing going for a long time but when you increasingly turn school into indoctrination and equal outcomes, anyone that doesn't get out and find some real education is going to struggle in life. I guess that fits the narrative
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My understanding, and I'm not an expert, is that the correlation between dollars spent per student and student outcome is extremely weak. Am I incorrect in that?
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You are not. [cato.org]
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Purely local funding for local schools based on local property values is working as designed. It's past time to do a redesign.
In California we fixed that like half a century ago.
Note that it doesn't solve every problem, because not many people want to work in an inner city school if they have a choice.
Equity vs Equality (Score:2)
In wokespeak, equity and equality mean very specific things. [google.com] Equality is equality of opportunity, equity is equal outcomes.
Kind of makes sense, but the flaws... (Score:2)
With this action, Dr. Bruner is pushing some of the flaws in our current system in the spotlight. Inequality. Students worried about grades over learning. Etc. Good for the professor. Apply what you have learned as an educator...
But she's undermining society-wide standards (and the tools that measure them) with her grading change.
What matters more? Making a student more educated, or measuring the student's abilities against a standard (and other students)? The professor thinks it's the former, but most of s
CRT in schools (Score:2)
Enjoy your ideocracy.
one standard (Score:2)
> "My studies confirmed my sense that sometimes what I was really grading was a student's background. Students with educational privilege came into my classroom already prepared to write A or B papers, while others often had not had the instruction that would enable them to do so. The 14 weeks they spent in my class could not make up for the years of educational privilege their peers had enjoyed."
I think we need to hold everyone to the same standard. It is unfortunate that not everyone has the same privi
Of Course Grading Sucks (Score:2)
"I gauge people not on the quality of their work" (Score:2)
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I had a teacher who had questions on a test that started with, "What do you think..." He reviewed the test beforehand and gave his opinion on those questions.
The first time I got the test, I said what I thought, and got marked wrong. I hated that class.
Let's try it in engineering (Score:2)
I think I'll start "ungrading" my engineering classes. Everyone gets an "A" just for improving (by their own evaluation). Who cares if the answer they get is right, or even remotely close to right? As long as they feel good about themselves. Objectively correct solutions are overrated.
As to the people who may be killed or injured using the products designed by my "ungraded" students ... not my responsibility.
Ah, Brave New World!
two paradoxes of education (Score:2)
That's great for English class. (Score:2)
I am considering ungrading my assignments (Score:2)
Seriously, I teach CS and I am considering ungrading my assignments. I'll still have exams which will be graded.
But really, the assignments are there to help the student learn the content. Having a grade get the students to focus on the grade and submit work for the purpose of the grade. I'd rather they submit assignments to get feedback and pay attention to the feedback.
Grading yourself? To me that would be a nightmare (Score:2)
I would not want to grade myself. My 20 something year old self would have spent way too much time agonizing over that. My older self would automatically and always submit grades of 'A' for everything. The teacher can change it if she wants. It is kind of like being asked in an annual review, what are some of your weaknesses or things you are not good at? Well, I think I am perfect. If you disagree it is on YOU to say so.
Also, I dislike the implications of "
Client was looking for a Linux Admin (Score:2)
People learn better without grades (Score:2)
Here's a happiness lab podcast on the subject of how grades were introduced by Ezra Styles in 1785, and the science of how people both learn better and are happier in an environment without grades: https://www.happinesslab.fm/se... [happinesslab.fm] (the episode page has links to related publications).
Re: It might work for subjects like English... (Score:2)
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this style of grading will be abused and/or mistrusted.
It doesn't really matter, at least not for STEM degrees. The degree (or even just the pursuit of it) is merely there to get you an interview. If you cheated your way through college or went to a useless program that didn't teach you anything it will be obvious. I used to laugh at the idea that people used FizzBuzz as an interview question, but I've been told by people who use it that it's actually an effective screen for entry level positions.
For other subjects like English, it probably is effective. Pre
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Grade: F
In addition to the fact there's dozens of ways a STEM class could use this type of grading (eg programming utilizing If / else vs switching)
She Can Adapt (Score:2)
But subjects where there's a right and wrong answer (basically, all of STEM), I don't think this is such a good idea....
Sure it is; she says upfront she's "concerned with equity" and "backgrounds" and "educational privilege" (i.e. parents/communities that care too much and are too effective at preparing their students for her class).
So why wouldn't she just mark math answers as "correct, but white" and "wrong, but black" or "exemplary, but asian" and praise them all as equal, or even assign them a value opposite what they'd get from merit-based grading?
Then when she examines the self-graded portfolios at the end of t
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Teachers no longer grade, schools no longer test for competence at admissions... how long before they stop bothering to teach the students at all?
If I had a kid, I'd probably just enroll him in a street gang. At least he'd learn *something* from the experience.
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You decide to speak to the professor to get extra help. A few friends in the class also help out. Suddenly it clicks and you end up getting a high B on the final (top 3rd of the class) after seeing improvements on other assignments.
Do you deserve a cumulativ
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Re: It might work for subjects like English... (Score:2)
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Way back when I was in University, many of my STEM courses actually addressed this issue with multiple final grade weighting schemes (stated in the course syllabus on day one) . Your final grade would usually the better of something like:
20% Assignments + 30% MidTerm + 50% Final
or
20% Assignments + 80% Final
So in the case where things clicked at the end and you did really well on the final you could still pull off a good grade. Or if you did the work and had good grades throughout the course there was less
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Nah, it works there too. I used to not grade students, just made something up at the end of the semester based mostly on how I felt that day.
Turns out students don't like that much.
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I think this would be excellent for STEM, but it will take a lot of work by the teacher to do it. I do believe that work would pay off nicely, but too many bean-counters thing teaching has to be done cheaply. Also, simple "right or wrong" is less common in STEM than most people think. A lot of things are about approaches, structures, design, architecture and evaluations and there the simple "right or wrong" stops.
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Good thing this is about an English teacher then. No need to construct a slippery slope straw man argument about it being applied to STEM.
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Let her get operated on by a surgeon who didn't pass any tests.
Re: It might work for subjects like English... (Score:2)
Re: It might work for subjects like English... (Score:2)
Actually very few topics in STEM have right or wrong answers except at beginner levels. And math.
Mostly it seems cut n dried when we have dumbed down or abstracted out or blackboxed the unknown things for the purpose of being practical enough to teach kids and being them to a level where they can understand & handle the unknowns & uncertainties.
From sub atomic particles to fundamental forces like gravity to the nature of light to the origin & evolution of life to most of medicine and engineering
Re: It might work for subjects like English... (Score:2)
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Re: It might work for subjects like English... (Score:2)
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Its great being a leftist, over here in Communismland. We get to have ice cream for breakfast.
I wonder if he's the same guy who is all upset because I won't "have an intellectual discussion" about Trump's election big lie, and how that pillow guy is a bit mental.
Could be.
Re: It might work for subjects like English... (Score:2)
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I won't laugh at you any more.
Do you want max improvement or min competency? (Score:2)
Leftists will attempt to apply this to every facet of life. This is what they do: start small and then eventually people cannot define what a woman is without fear of being cancelled.
This article is basically defining principles of fitness training, bodybuilding, physical therapy, etc....it even applies to corporate training. Is your goal to accomplish a set threshold or maximize results?
If so, grading stands in the way. Students with As have little incentive to push harder. Also, why is your simple mind so binary? If this approach works for one class, why does it have to be applied for all? English composition is pretty subjective. I can see a good argument that we want to ma
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You sound like Sheldon insulting Howard and engineering.
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Who they?
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Characters from the TV show, The Big Bang Theory.
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It's an English class, it doesn't matter what you grade them - it isn't something important. This approach wouldn't work in a real discipline
I come from a long line of educators (even in the 17th century many ancestors taught on some level). My dad taught hard sciences (biology, botany, ecology) and math where there are (mostly) provable right and wrong answers (a palm tree is a monocot and not a dicot). My brother teaches art where there are some rules (golden rule, the rule of 3, etc), but grading is mostly subjective. My mom taught piano where music theory can be objectively graded, but grading original compositions is mostly subjective. My g
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Being able to write well is a very useful skill. Grammar and spelling are obvious, but not so obvious is structure. Paragraph structure and document structure are important for clarity of communication between parties. I've read too many emails that read like someone vomited ideas onto a page and pressed "send" before they rubbed more than two brain cells together.
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There aren't many real disciplines then.
Engineering - I write software, yet I'm graded, and I grade, other people's work all the time. I submit my fix to be code reviewed. That is, I submit my code to be evaluated by someone else. They may like my work and pass it (approved), or they may reject it with comments on how to fix it or make it better, at which point I work
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I disagree. One thing I teach is software security and I think this approach would work very well and produce much, much better graduates. But I would need to invest several times the time I invest now and that would need to be paid for. It would pay very nicely for itself on a society level, likely several times over. But the bean-counters cannot understand quality and think education must be cheap. After all it is just learning facts. Right? Wrong.
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Educational methods are pretty much the core of news for nerds.
I'm not surprised to see some well-warranted skepticism, but the outright knee-jerk rejection of a new idea is really astonishing.
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Welcome to Slashdot! It wouldn't be a real Slashdot post if some one wasn't complaining about it not belonging here.
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She's teaching English you know? Things like reading a book, writing an essay, writing your own story, and maybe some poetry. If there's no subjective scale, a grade as it were to measure the quality then we start thinking that every scrawl and scribble on a toilet stall wall is a masterpiece.
"Here I sit broken hearted, paid my dime, and only farted." Shit! with stuff like that I'm owed a Ph.D. in English. I graded it all myself too!
I had a friend a long time ago that prided himself on tagging railroad car
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Yes, because that's how schools and districts are graded (which also means includes whether or not they will stay open) and how some funding allocation works as well.
I've worked public K-12 education (IT) for an inner city school district for over a decade and most of that was in high schools. The state mandated testing is always the most important thing and the only thing anyone actually cares about - outside of headcounts (where most of the money comes from). Most parents treat public schools as a day c