[EAS] The Trouble with Grading

[Peter J. Kindlmann]

Dear Colleagues -

You haven't heard much from me lately, in my mostly retired state, 
but I thought I'd pass on the item below. Perhaps my greater remove 
from teaching gives me a better perspective on how silly and outmoded 
much of what we call "grading" really is -- even in a technical 
field. Or as the author below puts it:

>"Many of us are frustrated with grading as presently, historically 
>constructed and are finding a mismatch between the kinds of learning 
>happening on the Internet (from a 5-year-old customizing her Pokemon 
>onward) and the rigid forms of assessment that has become the 
>hallmark of formal education, K-12 and beyond, in the late 20th and 
>now the 21st century. In an era when customizing, process, 
>collaboration, and learning from mistakes are hallmark, when we are 
>all having to revise how we think about the human desire to work 
>together towards a goal -- whether a Wikipedia entry or a Netflix 
>software competition -- we are saddled with a Machine Age model of 
>assessment which is as rigid, reductive, uncreative, and 
>uncollaborative as we can imagine."

And let me complement your thinking about this with a quote from Neil 
Postman's great work on the interaction between technology and 
culture, his 1992 "Technopoly" (pp.12-13):

>" ... the changes wrought by technology are subtle if not downright 
>mysterious, one might even say wildly unpredictable. Among the most 
>unpredictable are those that might be labeled ideological. This is 
>the sort of change Thamus had in mind when he warned that writers 
>will come to rely on external signs instead of their own internal 
>resources, and that they will receive quantities of information 
>without proper instruction. He meant that new technologies change 
>what we mean by "knowing" and "truth"; they alter those deeply 
>embedded habits of thought which give to a culture its sense of what 
>the world is like--a sense of what is the natural order of things, 
>of what is reasonable, of what is necessary, of what is inevitable, 
>of what is real. Since such changes are expressed in changed 
>meanings of old words, I will hold off until later discussing the 
>massive ideological transformation now occurring in the United 
>States. Here, I should like to give only one example of how 
>technology creates new conceptions of what is real and, in the 
>process, undermines older conceptions. I refer to the seemingly 
>harmless practice of assigning marks or grades to the answers 
>students give on examinations. This procedure seems so natural to 
>most of us that we are hardly aware of its significance. We may even 
>find it difficult to imagine that the number or letter is a tool or, 
>if you will, a technology; still less that, when we use such a 
>technology to judge someone's behavior, we have done something 
>peculiar. In point of fact, the first instance of grading students' 
>papers occurred at Cambridge University in 1792. at the suggestion 
>of a tutor named William Farish. [He was a professor of what we 
>might now call mechanical or civil engineering. --PJK]
>No one knows much about William Farish; not more than a handful have 
>ever heard of him. And yet his idea that a quantitative value should 
>be assigned to human thoughts was a major step toward constructing a 
>mathematical concept of reality. If a number can be given to the 
>quality of a thought, then a number can be given to the qualities of 
>mercy, love, hate, beauty, creativity, intelligence, even sanity 
>itself. When Galileo said that the language of nature is written in 
>mathematics, he did not mean to include human feeling or 
>accomplishment or insight. But most of us are now inclined to make 
>these inclusions. Our psychologists, sociologists, and educators 
>find it quite impossible to do their work without numbers. They 
>believe that without numbers they cannot acquire or express 
>authentic knowledge.
>I shall not argue here that this is a stupid or dangerous idea, only 
>that it is peculiar. What is even more peculiar is that so many of 
>us do not find the idea peculiar. To say that someone should be 
>doing better work because he has an IQ of 134, or that someone is a 
>7.2 on a sensitivity scale, or that this man's essay on the rise of 
>capitalism is an A- and that man's is a C+ would have sounded like 
>gibberish to Galileo or Shakespeare or Thomas Jefferson. If it makes 
>sense to us, that is because our minds have been conditioned by the 
>technology of numbers so that we see the world differently than they 
>did. Our understanding of what is real is different."


I have long felt that the practice of grading is overdue for a major 
re-thinking. And it has to start at the grass roots level. 
Institutions are unlikely to change unless someone can figure out how 
to defuse their grim "arms race."  --PJK

P.S.: And if you're curious who Thamus is in the Postman quote above, 
see <http://jove.eng.yale.edu/pipermail/eas-info/2008/000736.html>.

--------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 2009 10:23:41 -0700
From: Rick Reis <reis at stanford.edu>
To: tomorrows-professor at lists.stanford.edu
Subject: TP Msg. #973 Getting Out of Grading
Message-ID: <p0624080dc6fa67e8a360@[171.64.49.213]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

She stressed that she's not abandoning the role of grading, but 
having students take ownership of the task in a way that shows that 
"evaluation, in a serious way, is part of collaborative, interactive 
creativity. Right now, we have an educational system that encourages 
'teaching to the test.' That's appalling as a learning philosophy and 
a total waste of precious learning time and opportunities in the 
digital age."
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Folks:

The posting below looks at an approach that gets students much more 
involved in grading outcomes. It is by Scott Jaschik and is from the 
August 3, 2009 issue of INSIDE HIGHER ED, an excellent - and free - 
online source for news, opinion and jobs for all of higher education. 
You can subscribe by going to: http://insidehighered.com/.  Also for 
a free daily update from Inside Higher  Ed, e-mail 
[scott.jaschik at insidehighered.com]. Copyright ? 2009 Inside Higher Ed 
Reprinted with permission.

Regards,

Rick Reis
reis at stanford.edu
UP NEXT: Online Learning: More Than  Technical Savvy


		                         Tomorrow's Teaching and Learning

                     ----------------------------------------- 1,373 
words --------------------------------------

				Getting Out of Grading

Few parts of their jobs seem to annoy professors more than grading. 
The topic consumes gripe sessions, blog posts and creates plenty of 
professorial angst (not to mention student angst).

Cathy Davidson has decided that the best way to change grading is to 
take herself out of it. Davidson, a Duke University English 
professor, announced on her blog last week that she was going to give 
students the power to earn A's or some other grade based on a simple 
formula in which she wouldn't play much of a role.

"I loved returning to teaching last year after several years in 
administration ... except for the grading," she wrote on her blog. "I 
can't think of a more meaningless, superficial, cynical way to 
evaluate learning than by assigning a grade. It turns learning (which 
should be a deep pleasure, setting up for a lifetime of curiosity) 
into a crass competition: how do I snag the highest grade for the 
least amount of work? how do I give the prof what she wants so I can 
get the A that I need for med school? That's the opposite of learning 
and curiosity, the opposite of everything I believe as a teacher, and 
is, quite frankly, a waste of my time and the students' time. There 
has to be a better way...."

Her approach? "So, this year, when I teach 'This Is Your Brain on the 
Internet,' I'm trying out a new point system. Do all the work, you 
get an A. Don't need an A? Don't have time to do all the work? No 
problem. You can aim for and earn a B. There will be a chart. You do 
the assignment satisfactorily, you get the points. Add up the points, 
there's your grade. Clearcut. No guesswork. No second-guessing 'what 
the prof wants.' No gaming the system. Clearcut. Student is 
responsible."

That still leaves the question of determining whether students have 
done the work. Here again, Davidson plans to rely on students. "Since 
I already have structured my seminar (it worked brilliantly last 
year) so that two students lead us in every class, they can now also 
read all the class blogs (as they used to) and pass judgment on 
whether they are satisfactory. Thumbs up, thumbs down," she writes.

"If not, any student who wishes can revise. If you revise, you get 
the credit. End of story. Or, if you are too busy and want to skip 
it, no problem. It just means you'll have fewer ticks on the chart 
and will probably get the lower grade. No whining. It's clearcut and 
everyone knows the system from day one. (btw, every study of peer 
review among students shows that students perform at a higher level, 
and with more care, when they know they are being evaluated by their 
peers than when they know only the teacher and the TA will be 
grading)."

Several of those posting comments on Davidson's blog expressed 
support for her approach or outlined similar strategies they had 
tried or wanted to try.

One post, "Never underestimate grade orientation," noted a caution. 
"I can see this working with a small course. I tried something 
similar several years ago at Buffalo. My mistake was to make it a 
'curved' class (though only a positive curve). Two 'gangs' (one a 
group of fraternity brothers, the other just people who met and 
formed up) reached an agreement that they would vote up each others' 
work no matter what, and non-members' work down, no matter what, in 
order to increase their own grade in the class favorably, and hurt 
others' grades. I wrote it up a little here. When I intervened, I got 
complaints: I had set up the rules, several said, if I didn't like 
the outcome, how was it their fault."

Another posting describes a more successful attempt of a similar 
approach: "I've done something like this with my big undergrad class, 
'Intersections: Race, Gender & Sexuality in US History,' for years 
now. They do all the work, at a 'good faith' level of quality 
(earning a check from their TA), show up on time to all classes and 
participate in discussion sections -- they get an A. Grades scale 
down from there. The greatest thing about it is that many students 
without previous educational privilege *love* it and often do 
extremely well when not being judged in the usual way -- reading a 
book a week, writing response papers every week, and ultimately 
participating at grad student level. Entitled students who try to 
skate by on a good prose style do not like it at all."

In an e-mail interview, Davidson said her announcement represents 
more than her personal distaste for grading as we know it. Rather, 
her views relate to ideas she explores in her forthcoming book (from 
Viking Press next year), The Rewired Brain: The Deep Structure of 
Thinking for the Information Age.

"Many of us are frustrated with grading as presently, historically 
constructed and are finding a mismatch between the kinds of learning 
happening on the Internet (from a 5-year-old customizing her Pokemon 
onward) and the rigid forms of assessment that has become the 
hallmark of formal education, K-12 and beyond, in the late 20th and 
now the 21st century. In an era when customizing, process, 
collaboration, and learning from mistakes are hallmark, when we are 
all having to revise how we think about the human desire to work 
together towards a goal -- whether a Wikipedia entry or a Netflix 
software competition -- we are saddled with a Machine Age model of 
assessment which is as rigid, reductive, uncreative, and 
uncollaborative as we can imagine. We know from early childhood 
studies that if you tell an American toddler 'here comes the 
teacher,' he sits up straight, looks up, shuts up, and stops smiling. 
That is not the kind of teacher I want to be. But by the time young 
people ent
  er college, they have cordoned off 'education' into 'grading.' "

Her approach to grading, Davidson said, "encourages students to 
rethink everything they've learned about grading within higher 
education and encourages them to think about how you evaluate quality 
and performance -- not for a grade but for the respect of one's peers 
and one's own self-respect. This is one of the important skills of 
the 21st century."

She stressed that she's not abandoning the role of grading, but 
having students take ownership of the task in a way that shows that 
"evaluation, in a serious way, is part of collaborative, interactive 
creativity. Right now, we have an educational system that encourages 
'teaching to the test.' That's appalling as a learning philosophy and 
a total waste of precious learning time and opportunities in the 
digital age."

Whatever the results of her grading approach, Davidson is in a secure 
position -- as a highly regarded, tenured professor at a leading 
university -- to try something new. She acknowledged that there would 
be additional issues for a junior professor or non-tenure-track 
instructor taking this idea, but said that they shouldn't rule it 
out. And she noted problems with continuing with the status quo.

"One never knows what one can get away with pre-tenure and that is 
why I tell all of my students to make their department chairs 
partners in anything they do, from the most traditional to the most 
experimental -- and to keep a paper trail. That is, write to set up a 
meeting to explain one's pedagogical philosophy in a case like this, 
send it to your chair, ask to meet with the chair, discuss it, and 
then write a follow-up note thanking the chair for the meeting, 
recapping it, and giving her or him credit for any changes you've 
made in the syllabus (for example) and then send a copy of the 
revised syllabus. That is a helpful process for everyone involved as 
well as a wonderful addition to one's tenure portfolio," she said.

"Who wouldn't want a teacher who thinks seriously and deeply about 
what teaching means? I don't believe anything is risky if it is well 
thought out and well communicated. I happen to believe that just 
about everything is risky (including playing by the rules) without 
careful intention and careful communication."

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