Grades and Grading: An Exploration of Current Practice and Alternatives

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Grades and Grading An Exploration of Current
Practice and Alternatives

• AACU Pre-conference Workshop
• Presented by Consortium for Innovative
  Environments in Learning (CIEL)
• Seattle, Washington
• January 21, 2009

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Workshop Facilitators

• Maribeth Clark, Associate Provost and Associate
  Professor of Music, New College of Florida
• Marie Eaton, Professor of Humanities and
  Education, Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary
  Studies
• Western Washington University
• Kathleen A. OBrien, Senior VP for Academic
  Affairs, Alverno College
• Debra Quick, Chair, Department of Social
  Sciences, Johnson C. Smith University

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Colleges and Universities that use narrative
evaluationsAlverno CollegeBenningtonBrown
UniversityThe Evergreen State CollegeFairhavenH
ampshire CollegeNew College Of FloridaOxford
UniversityPrescott CollegeSarah Lawrence
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Goals of Workshop To assist participants
reflect and re-evaluate functions of grades To
envision alternatives and explore realistic ways
to experiment with change
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History of Grading
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History of Grades - 1

• Relatively new phenomena Greeks used
  assessments in their teaching but purpose was
  formative
• In US, grading and reporting unknown before 1850
• As number of students increased, students grouped
  in grade levels teachers noted skills developed
  and what needed to move on to next level

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History of Grades - 2

• Teachers began using percentages to certify
  student accomplishment in different subject areas
  (efficiency purpose)
• By early 1900s, criticism of approach led to
  scales, fewer categories (e.g. Excellent,
  Average, Poor)
• Reduced variation but did not solve problem of
  teacher subjectivity

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History of Grades - 3

• By 1930s grading on the curve introduced.
  Argument since intelligence test scores
  approximated normal curve, assumed that students
  in a class were similarly distributed. Forced
  distribution ranked by top score to bottom

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What are the purposes of grades? From your
experience, what have you found to be the
benefits of using letter grades? What are their
limitations?
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Critiques of Grades and GPA
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(In UK) Society demands that students demonstrate
academic achievement but also a variety of
capabilities These abilities are difficult to
grade and some graduates may be losing out
because their particular strengths are given
insufficient acknowledgement in current summary
assessment practices. -- Mantz Yorke, 2007
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Numerous research studies show no reliability or
consistency across graders in same and in
different schools.
Grades An inadequate report of an inaccurate
judgment by a biased and variable judge of the
extent to which a student has attained an
undefined level of mastery of an unknown
proportion of an indefinite material.
- Dressel, 1983
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• Advantages/Benefits of Letter Grades and GPAs
• Easy to report
• Can be quantified
• Meets demand of graduate schools and some
  employers to sort and rank order
• Promotes competition among students

• Disadvantages/Limitations
• Provides little information to student on what
  learned
• Students focus on the grade rather than
  learning
• Discourages collaboration, cooperative learning
  among students
• Promotes extrinsic vs. intrinsic motivation in
  learning
• Some students avoid taking difficult or
  challenging courses
• In an era of grade inflation, viewed as
  irrelevant indicator by some graduate schools and
  employers

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What researchers agree on

• Grading and reporting are not essential to
  student learning
• No one method of grading and reporting serves all
  purposes well
• Grading and reporting will always involve some
  degree of subjectivity
• Grades have some value as rewards but no value as
  punishments
• Grading and reporting should always be done in
  reference to learning criteria, never on the
  curve

• Summarized by Thomas R. Guskey, ASCD Year Book,
  1996, Communicating Student Learning

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Motivation and Grades
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Motivation and Grades

• Grades can have a beneficial effect on student
  learning, but only when accompanied by specific
  or individualized comments from instructor

• Studies on grades
• Page, E.B. (1958). Teacher Comments and Student
  Performance A Seventy-Four Classroom Experiment
  in School Motivation. Journal of Educational
  Psychology 49 173-181.

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So if grades fail, what are alternatives?
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WHY? The object here is graduates who know their
own strengths and weaknesses, can set and pursue
goals, who monitor their own progress and learn
form experience.

• Theres considerable evidence now that students
  who are self-conscious about their processes as
  learners are better learners, that they learn
  more easily and deeply, and that their learning
  lasts.
• The fashionable label for skills in question here
  is metacogitive but whatever you call them
  they represent a kind of learning that speaks to
  a belief that learning is personally liberating,
  self-empowering, and for all students.
• Pat Hutchings, 1990

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Reflection

• What are the cognitive acts in reflection?
• The capacity to step back
• To recognize framework/patterns
• To connect to previous learning

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Student Voices

• I sit in a heap of journals, evaluations, papers,
  notes, books, scriptsproof of my college
  careerand I ask myself, What does it all mean?
  What have I learned? How do I know what I know?
  How have I changed? What tools have I acquired,
  and how will they help me live my life? As an
  educated person, what responsibilities do I have
  and to whom, and to what degree need I be
  responsible? How have my subjects of study
  affected my life as a woman? Where do I go from
  here?
• 
  Drue Robinson

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Points for Reflection

• During a course - Less formal reflective
  activities that grow out of text and course work
• End of course - Self-evaluation of courses of
  teaching programs
• End of degree - Formally at distinct points in
  students degree program (end of Division II or
  Senior Summary)

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Student VoicesHow I learn

• I found that I dont learn best by just
  listening, reading, and writing. Knowledge sinks
  in best if I can also work with my hands and see
  what the end product looks like. Even though I am
  fairly adept at writing, math, and science, I
  feel more satisfaction when I learn abstract
  concepts by applying the knowledge to concrete
  purposes and skills.
  Aviva Steigmeyer

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Benefits of Reflective Work and Narrative Grades

• Self reflection and self assessment help to
  develop student sense of responsibility for their
  own learning and progress toward outcomes.
• Self reflection and self assessment also provide
  data to institutions on how well instructional
  strategies are working.

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Other approaches to grading

• Rubrics and Criteria linked to Learning Outcomes

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Art History Hypothetical Newspaper article

• Approaches to improving consistency in grading
  using an example from Walvoord and Anderson, page
  208

Example of narrative grading --- Using learning
outcomes and criteria, developmentally
sequenced Chemistry
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Questions for Group Discussion

• How can you improve the consistency of grades
  across a department or college?
• What might be meaningful alternatives to letter
  grades in your context?

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Future of Grading

• Impact of Globalization
• Potential of Technology
• Demands of Graduate Schools and Employers
• Influence of learning outcomes that help ensure
  accountability, focus and continuity,
  integration of learning

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What employers might do
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Influence of Graduate Schools

• Stanford, Yale, and UC Berkeley Law Schools
• Eliminating letter grades
• Replacing with levels of achievement (ex. Honors,
  Pass,
• Restricted Credit, No credit)
• Reasons to encourage students to take more
  challenging
• courses (avoid shopping around) to
  promote
• collegiality, fairness, anxiety
  pedagogical advantages

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