Wait, I get to choose my final grade?

 

This year, for the first time in my life, I was able to have a say in the final grade I achieved. In the Spring and the summer, I participated in two classes that allowed us, the students, the ability to give ourselves a final grade for the class. This was new territory for me because it has usually been my lecturer’s final decision on my grade. This is a concept that is mentioned in the article Case for grades. Going through this process, of having a say in my grade, and having to defend it, was difficult. It was difficult because I didn’t know where to start, how to be successful, or even what it was supposed to look like. Yet, it has been done, and I noticed a few things that I would like to talk about.

The first thing I noticed was my disbelief. I couldn’t believe it was real and in all honesty, I thought we were part of a semester long prank. Even though we had our 2nd years who told us about the experience, I still couldn’t believe it. Lecturers were trusting us to make informed decisions about our learning experiences and final grades? In graduate school? To say that this required some adjustment would be an understatement. Though, I slowly bought into this idea because it allowed me to hold myself accountable for my own learning, which I appreciated.

In order to avoid coming off as biased I will also try to look at the process from two different perspectives. Two perspectives that are negative and positive in order to provide an overall perspective that is more balanced. One small negative I noticed was related to accountability. What was hard to digest and to come terms with was the fact that I had to defend why I thought I deserved a certain grade. I found it weird to defend why the mountains of homework that I completed, countless times I participated in class were not enough evidence. In addition, it felt as if I had to prove that I did in fact do the required readings. It made me question why homework was given at all. I would have understood it if the course went further and made homework optional from day one, but it was not. (Now that I think about it, wouldn’t that be great? ) I will admit and say that I am probably being nitpicky in my attempt to provide a balanced perspective. But can we truly be reflective and mindful human beings if we don’t consider all possible perspectives?

Now, on to the positives! I appreciated the fact that I had some say in the grade I received. I was now at the grading table and had a voice. I could now describe the number of hours I put into the course that are always invisible to my classmates and lecturers. The countless social interactions I canceled in the pursuit of knowledge and genuine interest in the class could be described in full detail and hopefully acknowledged and rewarded. I could also detail the academic struggles I went through and connect them to my personal learning styles. Essentially, I was able to provide much needed invisible context that professors don’t have access to on a daily basis. Professors and educators, only have visible access to us in the classroom, and they don’t often see the struggles we go through to complete their assignments and learning endeavors. Having this opportunity to describe that gives us a voice and some power in what grade we deserve.

Despite the positives of this strategy, it is not enough. In the classes I took part in, we had a say in the grade we got, but I don’t know how much say. There wasn’t feedback as to how much my voice mattered or weighed in the final decision. The defense was mostly written and done at the end of the course which is why I am not sure whether it helped or not. One way to improve this, is to have a one on one conversation with the lecturer after the written defense is submitted. Almost like defending your thesis but hopefully in a much friendlier context and less stressful conditions. This conversation will provide both parties to hear each other out, and both agree on a final grade. I do recognize that this will be time consuming, but it is in the students best interest to do so. Isn’t that what education should really be about?

The World is flat. I know it is.

The world is flat. I know it is.

https://giphy.com/gifs/trolli-tila-tequila-flat-earth-bob-rapper-qGS2Wbjr0SJWg?utm_source=media-link&utm_medium=landing&utm_campaign=Media%20Links&utm_term=https://giphy.com/gifs/trolli-tila-tequila-flat-earth-bob-rapper-qGS2Wbjr0SJWg/download

But what if it isn’t….nah….I know it is……it must be, everyone says it is, so it must be.

But, what if it isn’t? What if….

Tests are necessary. I know they are.

But what if they aren’t…nah….I know they are….they must be, everyone says they are, so they must be.

But, what if they aren’t. What if….

Imagining an educational world without written tests or formal written assessments is hard to do. It seems like written tests have always been around. It seems they are an intrinsic, organic part of classroom instruction. It is hard to imagine education without them. Years, ago, however, it was hard to imagine a world that was not flat. But someone did.

Intriguing to me in this week’s readings are the connections between imagination, learning, types of assessments and student/teacher communication.

It seems to me that encouraging the imagination of students comes hand in hand with encouraging the imaginations of administrators, education experts and teachers. A short investigation of the development of written assessments on the internet is enlightening. (see: https://www.princeton.edu/~ota/disk1/1992/9236/923606.PDF and https://daily.jstor.org/short-history-standardized-tests/)

According to these articles, formal, written test assessments in America are a relatively new mid-1800s phenomenon begun by administrators in efforts to deal with assessing and placing rising numbers of students. They seemed to have replaced more subjective oral assessments done between students and instructors. These oral assessments, in essence, perhaps, became a conversation. Students would have the flexibility to explain their reasoning, to explain their connections – not just return to the teacher the reasoning of the teacher – if the teacher can look or be open to reasoning other than their own.

Being open to different ways of doing things, to have an imagination that allows for “what ifs…” is an important characteristic for teachers. I spent many years teaching math and also experienced my children learning math from others. Students actually “do” math in different ways. There often is more than one way to solve equations or to solve a math problem. Some teachers, however, don’t allow for this. I experienced this frustration first hand as my children would solve things in different ways, but the math teacher could not imagine, and did not consider correct, anyway of solving the problem beyond the way they did it – even though my children had the correct answer. As a fellow math teacher, I immediately thought the teacher had no imagination, even ability to see another way of doing something. This was frustrating for me and extremely frustrating to my children. Having an imagination to look beyond just the ways we see the world would be a first step in opening the world of imagination for our students.

For me, right now, it would be difficult to imagine an educational system that did not have formal grades and written assessments. I believe I could only “imagine” it one step at a time. So I think for me, opening my imagination as a teacher to other ways of doing things, of different connections made by students, for what ifs…, for assessments that allow for these things could be a start. And once you have a start, imagining a world of education in which imagination, making connections, allowing for what ifs… might not be too far away.

Face the Sorting Hat Bravely

I still remember in the first Harry Potter movie, the appearance of the Sorting Hat really amazes me. During the opening banquet at the beginning of each school year (or academic year in our case), all freshmen will wait to be seated on a stool. An enchanted and sentient hat, known as the Sorting Hat, will then be placed on their head. The Sorting Hat takes some moments to evaluate each student through “mind-reading”. Based on their personality, capability, and potential, every student will be sorted into one of the four Hogwarts Houses (i.e. the best fit House).

Where would the Sorting Hat place you?

The Sorting Hat provides rapid assessment for young talents and place them in the House that can be most beneficial for their later development. This talking hat plays such an important role in this fantasy world, and I always believe that the implement of Sorting Hat leads to the success and prosperous of Hogwarts. Back to our real world, we “mundanes” are facing all kinds of assessments in this society as well, qualitative or quantitative. Qualitative assessments are everywhere, from an informal “you did quite well in this project/presentation” to a formal written feedback/comment. This type of assessment can be subjective. A teacher may give two different qualitative assessments towards the same homework on two difference times, letting alone several different teachers. Qualitative evaluation is complicated and quite time-consuming since thorough understanding of the content is required. Quantitative assessments, on the other hand, are more standardized and hence much easier to operate. An unanimous grading standard is normally formed to quantify student’s performance and ability. Quantitative assessments end up with a score, level, or a percentage that is clearly to interpret. Since the performance is quantified and even ranked, some students find the quantitative assessment, such as test, quiz, and exam, quite scary, posing adverse effect on their performance due to mental stress. So more and more people start to rethink our current assessment system, and quantitative assessments are more preferred.

(click on the figure to be directed to the original source)

But can we really abandon letters or numbers in assessment? I would say “yes” if we are in Hogwarts with the help of the magical Sorting Hat. To me, I agree with Alfie Kohn that quantitative assessment is not “a particularly useful way to assess student learning”.1 However, the tests and exams do evaluate students’ performance on specific questions or scenarios, and most of these questions are originated from real world under simplification or reasonable assumption. A higher score tends to indicate enhanced capability and potential in solving these issues. If we need one person out of one hundred for a decision-making position, can we really select this person based on qualitative assessment? Qualitative assessment can narrow down the candidate to at least 5 people, all receiving high recommendation from the committee. By the end of the day, we still need to count on “numbers” to choose the best fit. Another example is that consulting company use decision matrix to find the best alternative and propose it to the client. Quantitative assessment happens everyday in our real world.

I know not every assessment can be accurate. Even for the Sorting Hat, it makes few mistakes once a while in categorizing students. However, that is not the excuse for us to abandon the assessment system, both qualitative and quantitative ones. Combination of various assessments can be more effective, and more constructive advice can be rendered for further improvement. Students need to know that our society builds on assessment. We need to face the “Sorting Hat” bravely and embrace it with positive attitude.

 

Reference

  1. The Case Against Grades. Alfie Kohn, 2011.

Battle of the Grades. The story of my life!

Nowadays, grades are all that matter for students. Haven’t heard in your class, will this topic be on the test? or how many questions does the exam have? The assessment is what students really care. But is it students’ fault? or is it the education system’s fault? god?

Sorry for disappointing you but, grades and tests are going to be present for a while. This is because resources are limited in education and not everyone has the financial funds to afford his/her education. That’s the reality. You have to compete with someone else to get a spot. From my experience, I can say that this kind of assessment is very stressful and put so much pressure on students. Let me tell you the story of my life: Tests everywhere! Just look at the picture below!

In order to be admitted to the civil engineer program in my previous university (Colombia), I had to take a standardized test during a whole day. What a nightmare! Then, based on my score, I had to compete against hundreds of students that also applied to the same program! If you are lucky, you are one of the 60 students admitted to the program. If not, as my case, you have to train yourself for a couple of months, pay for the exam again, and re-take it. Why? As many students out there, this was my only chance to study. I definitely could not afford a private university.

Why did I say that you have to train for those tests? You have to be seated for more than 8 hours in a chair. You have to be able to read and understand everything at once because you do not have time to re-read the problem or the questions. You are competing against the time. At the end, a lot of students have to fill out the bubbles without even have Hread the questions because there is no time! Sometimes, quantity does not mean quality!

Then, my first exam in grad school. What experience! I did not finish it and I failed the exam! Welcome to the grad school! The test was too long and this was my first time taking an exam in only 1hr and 15 minutes. I was used to have 2hr for an exam. I struggled so much reading it in a language that is not my native language. I had to read the questions many times to understand what I had to do or answer.  I could not think what I was doing I just tried to do as much as I could. I studied and prepared very well, I understood all the concepts (I am the TA for that course now) but at the end, grades are what matters and I did not get a good grade. So,

Why was the test useless to assess what I learned?

It is true that “grades promote a fear of failure”. For my second exam, I felt so much pressure of doing well because I did not want to failure again!

As professors, we really have to think what is the best way to assess students learning performance in terms how ready they would be prepared for the demands of this century workplace. All the disciplines are so different in nature! Even more, each student is different and the way how they learn is very diverse. The job is not easy at all.


 

When Peter Elbow Says It All…

When Peter Elbow says it all, I still find a way to assemble a lengthy and extremely disoriented post. So sorry!

In “The Case Against Grades,” Alfie Kohn clearly takes issue with how academia currently assesses learning: he detests grading. Understandably so. I can totally understand how our grading system is problematic, how it “diminishes” interest, “creates a preference for the easiest possible task,” and “reduces the quality of students’ thinking” (Kohn). Because wasn’t that how I was in high school? I wasn’t really interested in half the stuff I studied. I wanted the easiest homework possible. I memorized to test and forget. As I’ve said before, I didn’t mind school. Heck, I didn’t mind grades. I was a very competitive high schooler, be it in sports or academics. But that is exactly what grades shouldn’t be. Learning isn’t a competition.  Learning is a life-long process of growth that can be done individually or collaboratively. While I understand Kohn’s sentiments on the current state of assessment, I have a difficult time imagining it being any other way. I suppose this is normal because I suspect most of us were raised in this “QWERTY system” of grades (Liu and Nope-Brandon 9). It’s worked this far. Why change it?

Kohn makes a good argument as to why it needs to be changed. But I tended to align more with the argument Peter Elbow made in “Ranking, Evaluating, and Liking.” I mean really aligned. (If only you could see how much yellow highlighter I used in my Mendeley viewer while reading the article.) Having had a pedagogy class within my major before, I’ve come across Elbow in the past, but this time around it made more sense.  Elbow writes, “It’s obvious, thus, that I am troubled by ranking. But I will resist any temptation to argue that we can get rid of all ranking-or even should. Instead I will try to show how we can have less ranking and more evaluation in its place” (188). What I like is that he wasn’t writing an article on doing away with grading altogether; he was writing an article to advocate for evaluation–a method of assessment that helps the student grow as a writer. Not only does he outline the problem with ranking and even over-evaluating within this article, but he devoted time to the concept of “liking” students writing–this blew my mind because I was thinking just today that I was dreading next weekend when my students’ first papers are coming in for grading and how I wouldn’t see the light of day because of the electronic pile of papers that would be blocking the light from the window. I like teaching my students and working with them on their drafts. I don’t mind commenting on their final papers either. But, honestly, I’m not turning back flips waiting to read them, and ultimately, I’m so confused when it comes to smooshing the comments into a letter grade box. It’s a lot of pressure.

Elbow again seemed to read my mind here: “Writing wasn’t meant to be read in stacks of twenty-five, fifty, or seventy-five. And we are handicapped as teachers when students are in our classes against their will” (204).  I mean, mic-drop. No truer words. How do I solve these problems–my stress regarding reading stacks of papers, my stress at the thought of giving my students a letter grade, and my students simply doing things for this letter grade in a class they just want to tick off their list of “Boring Required Classes?” “Aggggggggggggh” in the words of Charlie Brown.

Another thing that I like about Elbow is that he states the problem AND gives some potential solutions to the problem. This seems normal, but have you noticed how rare it is to come across this in academic writing? There is always a problem, but rarely are potential solutions offered. Elbow writes about a concept and potential solution called “Portfolio Grading” (192-193). I first heard about this concept last fall and thought it was a really interesting means of assessment, mostly because I never had any professor use this method of grading before. I’ve also heard it takes a lot of work and planning. I’m not sure if this is true or not. I would suspect so because evaluating (giving detailed comments on every piece of writing) takes a lot of time. While I think I do spend a lot of time commenting on my students homework and papers, I always feel like I should do more. But I have so little time. Because I’m pressed for time, I made a promise to myself that I would use my two years in grad school as a means of getting myself acclimated to teaching freshmen writing courses before I would try something like portfolio grading. But the more I read about it, the more I like it. As far as I know, portfolio grading involves only giving out one grade at the end of the semester. During the semester, students turn in work only to receive comments on their writing. I also believe conferences are a big part of portfolio grading; this practice enables student and teacher to connect and truly work through issues in writing. The portfolio collects the students writing and evaluates it over the course of the semester. How did the student improve? How did he or she take comments into consideration? How did they not? I like it because it evaluates growth over a longer period of time rather than over the course of four weeks. I really do want to try this out someday.

Currently, I’m planning to offer revision this semester as a means of changing up assessment. I will grade my students papers (as I’m required to), but the grade doesn’t have to mean “end of story.”  If the grade is low, revision allows it to be a “teachable moment” or “learning experience.” I would hope that my students read the detailed comments that I give them, come talk to me about it, and then work to take these comments into consideration to revise for a better grade. While this still adheres to the grading system, it doesn’t suggest that a low grade is failure or that failure is permanent. They have the opportunity to grow and learn as a writer.

And ultimately, that is what I think is wrong with our current assessment system. It suggests to students that learning is done quickly and lasts up until the moment after the test is over. You either learned or you didn’t. If you didn’t recall the information, then sorry about it. You failed. I don’t think that encourages learning at all. Because trying and failing and trying and succeeding are life-long processes.

The difficulty with narratives rather than grades

How do you assess without grades?  It seems like, as an individual professor among many other professors, it would be impossible to do this 100%, and really, truly eliminate grades, especially when functioning in a larger system that demands that ranking.  If an individual teacher wants to do that, the entire system must support it.  Are there universities that have eliminated grading altogether?

I understand the desire and necessity to eliminate grading and ranking, but how can employers or admissions boards really assess an individual without some kind of a quantified or standardized measurement system?  Narratives sound like a great solution, but how can an employer know that my narrative, as the evaluator/educator, is the most accurate assessment of an individual, and someone else’s narrative, a different evaluator/educator, is less representative?  No two different individuals can write the same narrative or endorsement, nor should narratives or endorsements from two different individuals be interpreted in the same way.

Another way of thinking about this is the practical implication of what happens when two equally qualified students are vying for the same spot at an undergraduate or graduate university.  How can anyone tell from two different narratives or recommendations that one student is truly more qualified than the other?  One student could have enlisted a more eloquent writer, a more convincing advocate, for them than the other student.  Does that mean this student should be accepted to a university while another student of the same caliber, who may not have as shiny a recommendation, should not get accepted?

Group Work and Assessment

Let’s assume that you are working on a group project in a class. You are ambitious about this project, but, two other team members are not that interested in the group project as you are: one member is always late in the group meeting or does not show up. Another member comes to the meeting, but does not want to work. The portions he wrote have errors all the time. In addition, he keeps criticizing and rejecting your works or ideas during the meeting without showing his works or other alternatives. You are tired of arguing with him. The due date is coming, but your group work has not proceeded. What would be your solution to this situation?

  1. Work everything alone, and just put the group name on that
  2. Stop being ambitious, give up your grade, and leave the situation as it is
  3. Talk to the professor that your team members are not working

I made the situation above based on the stories of some college students’ comments. A college student says that group work is communism. This method takes away his motivation, thus, he couldn’t learn anything from his group works; another student complains that group work is an outcome of professors’ laziness because group work is easier to grade than grading the whole students, also professors don’t need to prepare their lectures during the group presentations. College students express many kinds of negative opinions about group works on the web, but I realized that there was always one reason behind their complaints: they don’t want to share their “A” with a member who doesn’t work. We cannot blame this idea because it is true that getting “A” without any contribution to the group would be unfair.         

Reading the article, Making the Grade: The Role of Assessment in Authentic Learning written by Lombardi (2008), I found a wonderful table called “Peer Group Assessment Template.” The idea here is that students evaluate each other after their group works, which can be reflected in the final grade. If this table was utilized in the classes, the college students’ experiences about group works might have been different. But at the same time, I was questioning what if there was no grading or just pass/fail system related to those group works? If so, the fundamental reason of avoiding group work will disappear because students will not have “A” anymore that they should share with a lazy group member. I am not sure if the quality of the group work outcome will be better or worse without grading system, but I guess that the atmosphere of the group would be much more humane because they will see each other as friends rather than a manpower for achieving a better grade.   

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