Thanks for the post! I think your experience is common, but I feel that some students thrive in this system and I’m one of them. I was very competitive about my grade (with myself) and actually enjoyed taking tests because it allowed me to know whether or not I sufficiently mastered the material. But it wasn’t really about the grade itself, it was about how well I knew the material and the grade was a signal of this. I didn’t only provide enough information to get an A, I provided enough information to show myself I knew it better than necessary to get the A. If I missed a question, I wanted to know why, because it wasn’t the grade, it was about knowing the correct answer. But the grade was the signal. Would lengthy feedback serve the same purpose? Probably, but I just want to see the grade and move on!

I agree with the advantages and disadvantages of rubrics, but I wonder to what extent the disadvantages could be tackled by making smarter rubrics. If you find that the grades some students get according to the rubric don’t reflect the quality of their submission, it seems like you should be able to identify why and make a new category to capture that in the future. One potential category could be something related to creativity or thinking outside the box. If this was valuable, you could make it worth a lot of points. However, students might try to be creative to get those points and not do well on the others. In this case, you can make the creativity and other metrics multiplicative rather than additive so you can’t get a good grade without doing well across the board.

Thanks Dr Nelson for your comments and thanks for encouraging us in class to write blog posts. I have been thinking about education system in my country but never write it down. GEDI class helps me to write my opinions and think more deeply about various aspect of education system in my country. Thanks for giving us this opportunity!

One question I have about assessment based on feedback is how do you deliver bad feedback in a constructive manner? Some teachers will be better at this than others, but it seems like a difficult task to me. “Your performance in class is not sufficient to pass this class?” “You have not put sufficient effort into your coursework to pass this class?” “Tommy, you suck at math and I’m not passing you?” Ok, probably don’t say that. Also, how do you justify your decision to students and parents that challenge whether or not they pass? With grades this is straightforward. But without, it’s based on your subjective assessment of their work throughout the semester.

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Thanks, Ken. I haven’t encountered Phenomenology before, but after a quick 5 minutes on Wikipedia, I feel qualified to comment on it (joke). My problem with this approach is that there is no good reason to a priori think that this is a reliable method to arrive at or approximate truth. It may be that our intuitions about how well students are learning things that are hard to quantify are reliable, but I don’t see a way around applying the Scientific Method in order to find out. Our evolutionary history surely selected for the ability to judge others’ characters in areas related to survival, but to the extent our intuitions about how well students are doing are reliable, I think they are byproducts of selection for other things. Given the huge literature in psychology showing how flawed our intuitions can be, even ones we are very confident in, and the huge literature on unconscious biases, I am suspicious we can intuit our way to the best ways of assessing students.

So, I don’t think Carrie should stop referencing “Make it Stick” until we all read it! (I did get it last week, but will admit it has yet to illuminate my Kindle screen). A couple of things: First, the way you (Cody) talk about how grades helped you figure out what you really wanted to do really resonates with me and from the perspective you invoked, grades and grading can be an extremely useful tool. I also love the idea of the radial transformation instead of the full-on revolution. I don’t see the latter as likely in any case, and I think the vehemence of Kohn and others who rage against grades is directed at a particular kind of assessment regime that has gained too much authority and hegemony, especially in K-12 education.
Moderation. In this as in all things. But also mindfulness. I think we need to be thoughtful about what it is that we think tests do and what grades measure because in many instances they are the unexamined default rather than the best option. Yes to the portfolio, yes to formative assessments, yes to testing that works to instill skills (that is the test teaches as much as it measures). But as Dan Pink points out and your own experience suggests, testing, rubrics, and grading are not good measures of or incentives for higher-ordered, integrative learning.

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I think there is a balance to be struck. I agree that in more subjective areas personalized “authentic” feedback is a much better approach, but for problems that are objective and have a clearly-defined Correct Answer, a numerical grade is the better way to go. It may be somewhat unfortunate, but students know how to speak grades and they’re quite good at translating numbers or letters into what they mean. So a numerical mark on a math problem is a clearer communication of that process’ importance. That being said, including commentary with the mark is, I feel, even better, because you can draw their attention with the number while emphasizing the concept’s importance with the comment.

Wait there’s more: check out Aakash’s post and the link to Jim Drier’s “assessment” techniques: http://www.aakash.xyz/blog/assessing-assessments/

I’ve enjoyed most of the take-home tests that I’ve had in undergrad for exactly the reasons mentioned, but I’ve had issues with the ones in graduate classes. Oftentimes the tests in graduate classes will be on much more advanced topics and the information is more commonly in the form of research articles. These are good for hyperspecialization, but make it difficult to find the more broad-application information necessary for solving test problems.
In my own class that I’m teaching, I’m hesitant to use rubrics because these students (Materials Engineering seniors) have a strong tendency to work to the rules and give the bare minimum effort to get a good grade. I have heard one of my students say, on multiple occasions, “I just need to pass, that’s all that matters”.

My world is largely subjective as well! Actually I’m pretty sure that holds for everyone’s world (because “standards” and norms are only as objective as their creator, and that’s usually knowledgeable but fallible human). Anyway, my attitudes toward assessment have changed a lot in recent years, and I still struggle with that tension you define between “grading”* specific skills and competencies (does the sentence have a subject and a verb? Is the source properly attributed? (there’s an app for though now, so who really cares?…..) and the kinds of subjective, qualitative expressions of accomplishment (beautiful prose, elegant argument, rich documentation) that are much more important and more difficult to “measure.” I’ve found that when I engage with the content of what students produce the form usually takes care of itself. And when I think about a holistic assessment where I use my expertise and experience to form an individualized response to each student things go a lot better. Students are less anxious about grades can engage what interests them in a way that works for them.
*(which is what, exactly? a measure against an ideal standard? a comparative measure? both? neither?)