This series chronicles the author’s experiences with ungrading in the writing classroom. Her reflections underscore the significance of student-centered assessment practices that promote growth, reflexivity, and academic justice.
Reflections on Unapologetically Ungrading: Part I
Preserving the Honeymoon
I love the start of a new semester. First days are exciting to me. Yes, they can be exhausting, too, but I love the eagerness and openness of students, even the reluctant ones, and their curiosity about what’s in store from the new course, new instructor, and new semester.
In the midst of changing schedules and students and instructors adjusting to multiple courses and exchanges with new people, the excitement often lingers into the first couple weeks of class, as well, as we collectively continue to engage the material and each other, set goals, and manage expectations.
But what I have observed and have come to dread is the end of this semester honeymoon period — this time between when students first begin the course and when I hand back their first major assignment.
The winds shift the class session after grades are released on the first major assignment. Bright eyes, smiles, and Good Mornings convert into awkward stares, nervous energy, and twisted faces with ears perked, listening intently — seemingly to make sure they miss nothing so they can “get it right” on the next essay.
My heart and confidence would sink at the end of every honeymoon. I would wonder: Did I not explain core concepts well in this unit? Perhaps, I should have integrated different prewriting tasks? Or, maybe I wasn’t clear on the directions? Each semester, I noticed this pattern and reflected often about what I could do differently next time. With each shift, the most apparent constant was grades. Once grades arrived on the scene of our learning community, the relationship dynamic shifted for the worse. Students no longer seemed to show up eager and confident. Instead, they questioned themselves and approached our time together with uncertainty, less willing to answer questions or take risks.
The pandemic brought with it time to sit deeply with my thoughts and observations about the classroom. I started reflecting, researching, and having conversations with colleagues about grades, learning, motivation, agency, equity, the classroom environment, and teacher-student relationships, and it lead me to ask questions like:
What if we could learn without fear of failure?
What would you do differently as a student, as a learner, if you knew you couldn’t fail?
Would you study differently?
Would you listen differently?
Would you give a different level of effort?
Would you take notes differently?
Would you participate or engage differently with your classmates and teachers?
How would your impact on your professional, personal, and global communities be different if you were able to take intellectual risks as a learner and not be penalized, but encouraged, supported, guided, and challenged to keep thinking critically and creatively?
With these questions in mind, I started designing room in my curriculum for students to hone their writing skills in a more flexible grading space. Admittedly, I was skeptical about how my adjustments would all work out, but I was committed to helping my students maintain their honeymoon fervor. I started assigning students COMPLETE/INCOMPLETE credit on low stakes assignments and providing more targeted feedback that acknowledged strengths, encouraged review and reflection on instructor and peer feedback, and required self-evaluation and identification of their writing patterns, progress, and goals. With less traditional “scoring” of assignments and more reflexivity, students seemed to be more responsive to my verbal and written feedback, more intentional about sharing and receiving peer feedback, and more amenable to reflecting on their writing practices and progress.
After piloting this low-stakes ungrading approach, I decided to ungrade a major assignment. I am fortunate to teach in a department that encourages innovative and responsive teaching practices, so I felt confident that using alternative assessment practices would not pose an issue for me administratively. However, I still wondered about the implications that such an approach would have on my students’ course progress and overall course grade as well as their collegiate and professional experiences beyond my course, especially since it is a general education course. Though I wrestled with these questions, and others, I proceeded cautiously with my plan to ungrade a major assignment.
I decided to ungrade our first major assignment. I felt this was a good starting place because it had been the assignment that seemed to stop students in their tracks once their grade was received. It was the honeymoon killer. I wanted to see how ungrading this assignment might impact the usual early-semester confidence and engagement plunge. My aim was to quiet the letter and amplify the lessons in my feedback so students could focus more attentively on their writing strengths and struggles along their semester writing journey.
I shared with students that after much reflection, research, and discussions with colleagues, I wanted to try a new approach to assessment for their first assignment. I shared that they would be assessed based on a COMPLETE/INCOMPLETE scale and that work submitted according to the specified, minimal requirements would be marked COMPLETE and receive 100%. Submissions that didn’t meet the criteria would be marked INCOMPLETE and receive no credit.
My students had questions. And faces. Lots of them. Understandably so since most had never heard of this type of thinking or assessment approach, and they were skeptical of the idea. I expounded on the minimum criteria, fielded questions, and provided reassurances throughout that class session, and most others that followed.
With my first ungraded major assignment in books, I noticed that student effort and work output was comparable to semesters when I graded the major assignment. However, in their post-assignment reflections, many students shared they were able to work hard on their assignment without the anxiety they usually felt when writing. This declaration was music to my ears! To hear multiple students say they were able to put forth their best effort without “agonizing” and feeling like it had to be “perfect,” but still feel confident about their efforts, were some of the greatest reflective comments I could read.
Even though I was just “trying it out” with the first major assignment, after receiving student feedback, reviewing their submissions, and seeing the value and benefit of ungrading the first major assignment, I decided to also ungrade the second major assignment. I made this decision because, ultimately, I felt uneasy about traditionally scoring the second major assignment when we were still in the portion of the semester when most of the key strategies about writing and rhetoric were being presented. Students were still learning how to effectively “listen” to texts and analyze rhetorical strategies. It just made sense to continue in the grace space for learning that I had established, and I was excited about how I was observing students talk about themselves as writers and learners throughout the semester.
Ultimately, after having provided students with continuous, targeted feedback throughout the first two units, I decided to traditionally grade assignments 3 and 4. In my courses, these research-oriented units and assignments come with greater time flexibility, frequent teacher-student exchanges, small-group conferencing and workshops, and strategic pre-writing exercises that help students prepare for successful completion of the culminating assignments.
I decided to ungrade the final major assignment of the semester to help mitigate end-of-the-semester writing anxieties and to also observe how students would respond to flexible grading on an end-of-semester major assignment. I was relieved and intrigued to find there was not a decline in the quality of student work, and to my delight, from my initial integration of ungrading a few semesters ago to the present, I still have not observed a decline in the quality of student work. From my experience, most students seem to be more motivated and committed to doing their best work, and my most exciting moment is when I have students request an extension (on an assignment that will not be “graded” in the traditional sense) because they feel they need more time to give the assignment justice.
I’m not saying there haven’t been any challenges or that I haven’t had to make adjustments mid semester (I have). But what’s been rewarding and most important to me is that I have had the pleasure of seeing and hearing about the anxieties that have been relieved and the creativity that has been released because of my course’s flexible practices and the heightened focus on student understanding, learning, and progress rather than working towards a particular grade.
I’ve used a hybrid approach to assessment for the last few semesters, and I find that it offers a useful balance of the familiar (traditional grading) and the flexible (ungrading) that keeps my students and me focused, engaged, and goal-oriented throughout the semester.
I am grateful that the tone of my classes has evolved over the last few semesters, and I’ve found students to be more responsive to feedback, more eager to learn and apply content strategies, and more thoughtful about setting and pursuing semester goals.
In Part II of this series, I share what I’ve learned from my students about grades, learning, and self-perception.
