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  • Active Learning and the Scarcity Model of Grading

    By Joshua Kim September 3, 2009 9:04 pm EDT

    "I've been mentally toying with a scheme that looks like this: separate teaching from grading, then reward teaching that results in good grades. The instructor wouldn't grade his own class; he'd trade with someone else, ideally at another institution."

    Craft and Evidence, By Dean Dad

    Dear Dean Dad.

    Please sign me up! I'm thinking we need to try something different when it comes to grading.

    Can anyone point me to some good writing or presentations on how to square active learning techniques with the traditional grading schemes that we all need to work in? We are all trying to set-up courses that play to students strengths (rather then try to overcome weaknesses), that play to students multiple intelligences and the range of learning styles. We know that some students will communicate better visually then through writing, or will perform better on high stakes assessments if they are given frequent low-stakes quizzes.

    The problem with designing our courses for student success is that then more of our students will succeed. And then these "successful" students will then all expect to get "A"s. Our students will confuse a positive learning experience with the expectation that they will get a high grade. Or perhaps we should think about the success of our courses in terms of getting as many students to an "A" as possible. Under this model an "A" grade is not scarce, but a destination that with careful course design and appropriate use of technology we can all bring our students.

    One example is of how the combination of sound pedagogy and appropriate technology can end up with everyone getting high grades (and expecting final A's in class) is multiple choice exams. Course management systems allow us to offer our students frequent, low-stakes assessments. Students get a chance to practice with the material in a low-pressure way, so by the time they get to the mid-term or final students are comfortable with the method and content and tend to do very well. The learning is great - but what do we do with all the high grades?

    Are the concepts of high scarcity and courses designed around active learning principles fundamentally incompatible? Or at least conflicted and difficult to work with? How will student react to courses that are set-up as supportive and safe learning environments, that play to their strength and offer assessments based on multiple learning styles, when at the end of the course they don't get an "A"?

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Comments on Active Learning and the Scarcity Model of Grading

  • Posted by WTF on September 4, 2009 at 12:00am EDT

  • You quote Dean Dad saying, "then reward teaching that results in good grades."

    This is a problem because it ignores the very reality that sometimes "bad grades" have nothing to do bad (or good) teaching.

    I learned this the hard way by using a technique similar to what you propose: a series of small stakes assignments that built to medium stakes assignments to demonstrate mastery of the small concepts. Too many students did poorly on the small stakes assignments because they didn't take them seriously, and then got grumpy when I expected them to pull it together to be able to do the medium stakes assignments (which were what we had as large stakes assignments just 10-15 years ago).

    In the end, it seems too many profs are making low stakes assignments, being free and easy with A's and B's, and just becoming unwilling (or administratively prohibited) from failing students who slack, go missing, don't do the work, or just have no talent for college.

    More F's (as opposed to more A's) might actually be better to improve everything overall. Because all some undergraduates want are A's just for showing up and pretending to be learning. Who is served by that?

  • Posted by Parag Shah on September 4, 2009 at 5:15am EDT

  • Hi Joshua,

    Thanks for sharing your thoughts on grading.

    A professor at Duke did a very interesting experiment by crowdsourcing the grading to the entire class. You might find it interesting:
    http://www.hastac.org/blogs/cathy-davidson/how-crowdsource-grading

    I also agree with you that having a series of small assignments is better than having one or two big tests. It keeps students alert and removes the pressure which leads to cramming rather than understanding.

    Personally, I think there should not be any grades. In a class students are taught certain competencies. A teacher teaches those competencies and the students need to prove to the teacher that they have learned those skills. When they prove it they are tagged as 'competent' and until they prove it, they simply need to work on getting better. No grades, and ideally no semesters as well :-)

    Just my 2 cents.
    --
    Parag
    http://www.adaptivelearningonline.net

  • Learn from the Arts
  • Posted by Ross Miller , Dir. of Assessment at Berkeley College on September 4, 2009 at 9:00am EDT

  • When a musician wants to play in a band or an orchestra, they have to audition -- i.e., show that they have attained a specific level of achievement to gain admission to the group. Much "grading" in music and the other arts has to do with being compared to a (style or tradition dependent) high standard. The high quality of both school and college music groups attests to the fact that high achievement does not have to be a scarce commodity.

    One of the most neglected ideas in the education reform movement is to hold criteria for graduation constant and be flexible with time to graduation. Instead, we opt for holding time constant and letting people graduate within a range of barely functional (D?) to really pretty good (A). What sense does that make? What does a degree mean with such variation?

    When teaching is effective, the distubution of achievment levels among a group of learners should no longer be "normal" -- it should be skewed radically to the right toward high achievement. We should be creative enough to figure out how to take the time to foster consistent high levels of learning.

  • Active Learning/Traditional Grading
  • Posted by JNichols on September 4, 2009 at 2:15pm EDT

  • I, too, have thought about how to combine these two in my own college teaching.

    Are grades truly necessary? My daughter goes to Hampshire College in Amherst, MA. Students received a written assessment of their work from their instructors rather than a grade at the end of the semester. Most people think that means the students do not have to work hard, but I have observed just the opposite among my daughter and her friends. Because they are actively learning subjects they want to learn, they work harder than I ever did many years ago in a traditional college with grades. Over half of each class goes on the graduate school so the lack of grades is not an impediment to further studies.

  • Yes - and no
  • Posted by Dr. Pepper , Academic in Training at in Academia on September 4, 2009 at 3:45pm EDT

  • I don't mean to rain on your parade guys, but grades are still necessary. Why? Because the university factors them into some sort of GPA scheme for graduation, credits and quality points. If you want to get rid of grading, you need to reform the whole system.

    Until then, grading is necessary. As far as giving someone else your stuff to grade, don't grad assistants do this already ;-). Besides, grading should not be a pain. Grading is part of assessment which should be based on what you teach!

    If grading is painful, you are doing it wrong.

  • a few problems
  • Posted by Jeff , Associate Prof of English at Liberal Arts College on September 6, 2009 at 10:15pm EDT

  • First, not all students start at the same place. Moving a student from F to C work in a semester might be better than moving a student from B to B.
    Second, not all courses are equivalent. How do you decide which of a number of comp courses, for example, is the same as a course at another institution.
    Third, knowing someone else is going to grade the work of your students might motivate a professor to allow as many rewrites as possible, essentially handing in only work the prof wants another prof to grade (the prof's work).

  • On Grades
  • Posted by 'Gary Pandolfi , Instructional Technologist/Adjunct Associate Prof. of English at Quinnipiac University on September 8, 2009 at 2:15pm EDT

  • I believe that traditional grading is exclusive. More authentic summative assessments need to replace traditional testing scenarios. To explain, it is like coaching a team. The best players start. The starting lineup changes based on who plays best at game time. The coach doesn't average a players performance and thus make him/her sit the bench because the first half of the season the player was not at the same level as other starters. You don't hear "I know that you are the best player on the team now, but you were the worst player at the start of the season, so your average isn't good enough to start the game."

    We need to assess students' capabilities at the start and at the end of the course. A student who writes D papers at the beginning but writes just as well as the student who did A work all semester, deserves the A.

    In addition,we need to design assessments that show what the student knows and what the student can do with that knowledge. Most students can "own" material for three days by cram studying. They retain little when they do this, however. Much more useful is the test that measure what they can do with the material they have learned.

    Can they apply their knowledge? Have they developed habits of mind that enable them to solve problems based on what they now know?

    Traditional methods may produce skilled surgeons, but I wonder what uber-surgeons got left behind because their averages fell below the cut even thought they may have aced their respective final exams.

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