Great point! I try to use the Learning Partnerships Model (in a comment reply above). One of the key principles in that model is situating learning in the learner’s experience, and I think having students write/communicate about something they are interested in is a great way of doing that!

Remy, I appreciate the point you make about qualification. Standards are certainly important and quantitative measures make standards easy for sure.

That said, I’m left wondering if a quantitative measure like grades can, with any amount of certainty, demonstrate one’s qualifications. A grade is just a measure that one person assigned to another. Unless the grade a surgeon is given is based on the actual percentage of successful surgeries, it doesn’t mean a whole lot, and it might not make much of a difference in one specific case. I think it’s comforting to assume objectivity in numbers and grading systems, but I’m not sure that it provides the objective information that we want it to.

Thanks for your thoughts, Kathleen! Like you said, these are complex problems with no quick fix, but I especially appreciate that you mention that the solution involves trying new things. I think sometimes we can get so caught up in overarching problems and only consider solutions that come from the top down instead of how we can work within our locus of control to find solutions that might work from the bottom up. Change can start either way.

Devin, I think you make a really interesting point on how we struggle to use measures of growth in STEM disciplines. Though I’m not in STEM anymore, I was an engineering student as an undergrad and I found that to be true. Fortunately, there was always partial credit for showing work. Still, I feel like the way STEM is taught is so rooted in objectivity that it makes students hard to understand that there is gray area of partial understanding.

I always thought it might be interesting to see how STEM students responded to being given problems slightly beyond what they had been taught. This might provide a challenge, where “partial credit” is the expectation and they have opportunity to lean into some less structured problem solving, but I could also picture them objecting to being given content they weren’t taught.

Thanks for that question, Anna. That’s one I could probably think on all day, but here are my brief thoughts:

I don’t see immediate change to the system as likely. It’s important to acknowledge that these quantitative measures hold value to outsiders so they can quickly glean information about a student (whether it’s as a prospective hire or an applicant to an advanced program). Students are unlikely to stop worrying about such things and rightly so. Hence, I think it’s important to consider how we acknowledge these numerical measurements for how they might be used and figure out how to best utilize them (or maybe not utilize them) for learning.

Two of my most memorable and talented professors plainly stated the grading system was flawed and told us how they were going to work around that. I had a differential equations professor who told us the important thing was learning 12 different skills. If you mastered all 12 by the end of the semester (by perfectly completing them on at least one test), you got an A. By the end of the semester, I had those skills.

A professor in philosophy said he’d pretty much be giving As all around (assuming papers showed sufficient effort) but he would not be afraid to critique papers and tell us how he would truly rate the argument if we acknowledged C as truly average. There would just be two scores: what went into the gradebook and what he really though. Having the fear of not getting an A removed made the class less stressful, but I was driven to be thorough in my work in hopes of true mastery and the unofficial A.

The quote is certainly one that is hard to unhear when presented in the proper context. It makes me think about how may daily work benefits students: Is it in a way that I can measure and demonstrate to my boss or really the kind of support students need? It poses problems but ones worth thinking about.

Thanks for that insight, Kristen. As an undergrad, I was in an honors class where a professor mentioned the concept of a “gentleman’s C,” referring to the time when the average scholar would happily accept that grade. It certainly shocked the class, but it made me remember that issue that you pose.

That’s a really interesting perspective from your boss. Part of me wonders if there was any longitudinal study involving problem solving skills (or another competency) that might have captured any discontinuity when SOL was enacted. Unfortunately, it would be hard to figure that out retroactively.

I won’t lie. It’s a regular struggle. Particularly in instances where time is valuable, I sometime have to be the one to make a decision.

However, when I have the time to create a learning moment, I tend to fall back on some of my student development background. Baxter Magolda’s Learning Partnerships Model. I actually have this set as my desktop background in my office where I do most of my work with students: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5PBQuR8uvtc/VjFd_R0baYI/AAAAAAAAANQ/GSnIjtlz_t8/s1600/learning%2Bpartnerships%2Bmodel.jpg

However, to put it quickly, it’s about acknowledging the student as an expert of their own situation and working to co-construct meaning. I find it’s about asking a lot of questions and only suggesting answers if a student is really stuck. Otherwise, they focus too much on my suggestion.

Sounds like you do some of the hard work actually dealing with the grading, Blayne. I can only imagine that’s difficult.

Whenever I hear students talking about grades and their concerns, I always try to remember their perspective of what their grades might determine. It’s really difficult to have a conversation about learning when they are most concerned that a non-ideal grade might bar them from entering a grad program or med school. It’s a tricky conversation to have.