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#altgrading

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If a student only has 10min (or 1hr, or w/e short period of time) for an assignment I'd rather get their best thinking for that time than whatever they can get from . I try to set up my grading so they're incentivized to do that.

(Also, I'd like to help students so they don't find themselves in that situation very often, but I know most educators - myself included - are often too crunched to provide that kind of additional mentoring/education.)

Josh Eyler: There is a lack of research on the effects of altgrading practices on student learning. We don't know if these practices will help students learn better. We do know, however, that these practices can develop useful habits of minds and metacognition

Josh also points out that we can decouple grades from learning. What about a course where lots of students got As? Does that mean it was an easy course? Or that students learned a lot?

Continued thread

Fourth approach: portfolio grading. Students collect their work over time with feedback (and maybe not grades) from their instructors. Then at the end of the course, there's an assessment of the students best work or revised work. Longtime practice in the arts, increasingly common in writing, and experiments in other disciplines during the pandemic. #ungrading #altgrading

Contract grading, standards-based grading, and now approach #3: ungrading. Emily and Josh are using ungrading fairly narrowly here: ungrading involves having students self-assess and assign themselves a grade.

I tend to use ungrading more broadly to refer to a set of beliefs and practices that critique and push back on the role of grades in education. We might need another name for the more specific practice of having students assign themselves grades.

Arrived (late) at the UM CETL workshop on alternative grading practices. Emily Donahoe is sharing about labor-based contract grading where students contract at the start of the course to do a set amount of work for a set grade. I'm a little skeptical about grading on work completed, instead of the quality of that work. Thoughts? #ungrading #altgrading

Tried to push my class learning goals into higher cognitive levels this semester. Using repeated assessment (mastery grading) of specific learning goals, where focus is on feedback and growth with passing levels of Apprentice (A) and Journey (J). Revisions allowed for A→J.

I added Master (M) level if they create their own product demonstrating the learning goal. Getting some nice work from quite a few students (and some so-so work).