Assessments as you mentioned, puts most of the focus on grades which becomes the students main concern, and not the actual learning process. I’m happy to know that not all of us have been thorough this traditional system and that you didn’t receive grades which made you more interested in what you learnt!

LikeLike

Dr. Nelson, of course we agree 100%, I should act as a source of leadership for the class. I hope my students would agree that I do just that, although in an admittedly unorthodox way.

I truly believe standardize tests do not improve students’ abilities to learn. Most of the time, teachers focus on feeding students with the information on the standardized exams, but often forget to encourage creative and critical thinking. Thus, once the standardized exams are over, the information is often lost as it was only memorized to pass the exam. How can we combat this?

I do agree that grading is a fickle subject when it tests the ability of someone’s intelligence. I personally, am not a good test take and as a result, my grades often suffer. The situation becomes way complicated across the country as some school systems has varied grading criteria so how can be combat the qualifications need to get into a university if grades are not an accurate representation?

Hi Dr. Nelson, your feedback/grading approach sounds great. The idea that students receive a holistic “course grade” rather than an A on quiz 1 B+ on quiz 2, etc. seems like a strong approach. I’m going to do some serious thinking about how I might implement a version of this in my teaching. I usually use essays rather than exams but that doesn’t seem like it would create much of an issue. Including students in designing essay questions is something I’ve been attempting to do. I’m not sure if the students feel it works well for them, but it seems more democratic to me. Do you find that students are, perhaps, upset at the end of the semester if they have received a grade lower than they expected?

Back to that PETA unfriendly opening section, I think what I find so difficult in Pink’s approach is that he assumes his audience will either be unfamiliar with anarchist or socialist approaches or, perhaps more likely, that they will have negative views on them. So maybe a charitable reading of his video is that he is attempting to slowly introduce a (hostile?) audience to an unfamiliar idea. I will definitely check out Bogdanov and Lunacharsky whose work I haven’t read. Thank you for the recommendations!

” . . . follow my own heart and do the things in which I feel mostly interested . . .”

Removing lazy assessments and replacing them with something that requires thought and engagement on the part of the instructor is not the most efficient way to run the class, but it seems to me to be the right thing to do. Helping students see relevance in the topic for their own lives is a challenge that instructors should take on. I enjoyed reading your thoughts!

LikeLike

Thank you for bringing the issue of stigmatization of , I shall say, anti-grading approach. Since grading is considered a measure to how fair the distribution of success is any attempt to question such measure is taken with a grain of salt and criticism.

I agree with your sentiment re: Kohn. We’re a culture that fetishizes the symbolic and grades are simply the educational apex of meaninglessness. I can’t imagine how many mental illnesses this fetish has caused and manufactured.

Thank you so much for bringing this example. It actually gave me inspiration to be more creative about the way I establish relationship with my students. I can picture the faces of the students who are surprised to hear that they can do anything during the Pink Day. I sometimes feel that the students are so much muted that it is hard to imagine such freedom. So, I believe such creative and liberating approach may help them to dare to step outside their thinking box, which is shaped by their experience as a student.

To attempt to answer your last question: I’ve had success with a couple of things: I don’t grade much, but do give lots of formative feedback that addresses the content or intellectual issue they are working on. And I try to cultivate their curiosity about what they are doing with questions like: “Tell me why this was interesting to you? Tell me why this is important? What did you think of that source that argued something different from what you are arguing here? This shifts the focus away from “did I do that right?” or “is this an “A” (student’s question) to conversations about the research process or the interpretation of evidence. The goal is to get students to invest in their own learning and project — but you do have to invest yourself as well IMO.
I also think you need to set some objectives for their learning and tell the students what those are up front. It’s ok (necessary even!) to de-stabilize the traditional hierarchy in the classroom, but you are still the instructor and they are right to expect some leadership from you.