1 00:00:30,000 --> 00:00:36,160 Welcome back everybody. 2 00:00:36,160 --> 00:00:41,740 This is Wayne Pearson for episode seven of season three of the Poggle Podcast. 3 00:00:41,740 --> 00:00:43,760 With me today is Alex Grushaw. 4 00:00:43,760 --> 00:00:45,680 Alex, how are you? 5 00:00:45,680 --> 00:00:47,360 Doing fine, Wayne. 6 00:00:47,360 --> 00:00:51,640 I think you have something for us today that is going to be of great interest, not just 7 00:00:51,640 --> 00:00:55,520 for Poggle practitioners, but for teachers everywhere. 8 00:00:55,520 --> 00:01:01,320 And that is how can we adopt alternative ways of grading our students' work? 9 00:01:01,320 --> 00:01:02,760 Yes, exactly. 10 00:01:02,760 --> 00:01:12,480 So over the years, many of us have struggled with the typical point system of grading. 11 00:01:12,480 --> 00:01:18,240 And there's been a number of things that have come out in various literature forms, either 12 00:01:18,240 --> 00:01:23,680 in journals or just in books and things like that, about alternatives to the traditional 13 00:01:23,680 --> 00:01:25,480 grading scheme. 14 00:01:25,480 --> 00:01:33,820 With me today are three Poggle practitioners who all use some slightly different ways to 15 00:01:33,820 --> 00:01:35,440 assess their students. 16 00:01:35,440 --> 00:01:43,120 I have with me Sean Garrett Rowe, who's an associate professor of chemistry at the University 17 00:01:43,120 --> 00:01:44,120 of Pittsburgh. 18 00:01:44,120 --> 00:01:49,940 Sean is a physical chemist there, and he teaches both physical chemistry and general chemistry 19 00:01:49,940 --> 00:01:52,520 using Poggle. 20 00:01:52,520 --> 00:01:56,880 He's been part of the Poggle Steering Committee, and over the last couple of years, he's been 21 00:01:56,880 --> 00:02:03,480 transforming how he assesses students from these high-stakes exams that we're used to 22 00:02:03,480 --> 00:02:07,840 to some low-stakes proficiency-based assessments. 23 00:02:07,840 --> 00:02:14,120 I also have Nick Roster, who is from Northwestern Michigan College. 24 00:02:14,120 --> 00:02:18,360 He teaches anatomy and physiology there and some other biology courses. 25 00:02:18,360 --> 00:02:23,440 He's also the assessment coordinator at Northwestern Michigan. 26 00:02:23,440 --> 00:02:30,160 And also with me is Stephanie Erickson, who for a number of years was teaching middle 27 00:02:30,160 --> 00:02:39,560 school science and has been using standards-based grading in middle school. 28 00:02:39,560 --> 00:02:44,040 And she's currently working on a PhD at the University of Minnesota and is a curriculum 29 00:02:44,040 --> 00:02:50,080 instructor at University of Wisconsin, River Falls. 30 00:02:50,080 --> 00:02:53,000 All three of these people have been with the Poggle Project for a little while. 31 00:02:53,000 --> 00:02:55,920 They used Poggle in the classroom. 32 00:02:55,920 --> 00:03:05,720 But the notion of using traditional grading has left our podcast for today, and we're 33 00:03:05,720 --> 00:03:08,040 going to talk about alternatives. 34 00:03:08,040 --> 00:03:11,840 So I'm going to turn it over actually to Sean first. 35 00:03:11,840 --> 00:03:15,040 Sean, can you tell us a little bit about what you do? 36 00:03:15,040 --> 00:03:16,040 Sure. 37 00:03:16,040 --> 00:03:17,040 Hi, Alex. 38 00:03:17,040 --> 00:03:18,040 Nice to see you again. 39 00:03:18,040 --> 00:03:23,240 Nice to chat with you, Sean. 40 00:03:23,240 --> 00:03:31,680 The basic idea for what I call mastery-based grading is I got really frustrated with the 41 00:03:31,680 --> 00:03:37,040 high-stakes assessments that I had used teaching general chemistry. 42 00:03:37,040 --> 00:03:43,200 I didn't feel very satisfied with the questions that I was asking. 43 00:03:43,200 --> 00:03:48,240 I felt like they encouraged students to have a really strong point mindset. 44 00:03:48,240 --> 00:03:50,440 Can I get my points back? 45 00:03:50,440 --> 00:03:54,480 Can I get another half a point for this rather than focusing on the learning? 46 00:03:54,480 --> 00:03:56,200 Yeah, they were bargaining for points. 47 00:03:56,200 --> 00:03:58,160 That's the usual problem. 48 00:03:58,160 --> 00:04:01,640 And so I didn't find that intellectually satisfying. 49 00:04:01,640 --> 00:04:09,440 And over the years, I'd heard a lot about ways in which big high-stakes exams, they 50 00:04:09,440 --> 00:04:15,320 stress students out, and that's correlated with a lot of equity issues. 51 00:04:15,320 --> 00:04:20,160 Folks who don't respond to high-stress environments don't do well. 52 00:04:20,160 --> 00:04:23,400 And that doesn't reflect science at all. 53 00:04:23,400 --> 00:04:25,840 My lab is not a high-stakes exam. 54 00:04:25,840 --> 00:04:30,160 When we're doing science, we're down in the... 55 00:04:30,160 --> 00:04:31,160 We try stuff. 56 00:04:31,160 --> 00:04:32,160 We try work. 57 00:04:32,160 --> 00:04:33,360 We try again. 58 00:04:33,360 --> 00:04:37,560 So then I read some papers from the literature. 59 00:04:37,560 --> 00:04:43,080 So Santiago Toledo, who's also pretty active in the POGAL projects, came up with a really 60 00:04:43,080 --> 00:04:49,160 great idea, I thought, and it's got a couple of ingredients, that assessments should align 61 00:04:49,160 --> 00:04:55,920 to learning objectives, that the objectives should be expressed at a couple of different 62 00:04:55,920 --> 00:05:00,520 levels of sophistication, some easy questions and some hard questions. 63 00:05:00,520 --> 00:05:03,400 And explicitly telling students what levels they're working at. 64 00:05:03,400 --> 00:05:06,560 There's a lot more I could say about that. 65 00:05:06,560 --> 00:05:08,640 Questions are graded proficient or not proficient. 66 00:05:08,640 --> 00:05:10,640 So there's no partial credit. 67 00:05:10,640 --> 00:05:13,520 You get the essential concept, that's a proficient response. 68 00:05:13,520 --> 00:05:17,400 If you don't get it, then that's not a proficient response. 69 00:05:17,400 --> 00:05:22,500 And then students get multiple chances to show their proficiency. 70 00:05:22,500 --> 00:05:27,080 So they can try, get some feedback, oh, you made some progress, but you're not there yet. 71 00:05:27,080 --> 00:05:28,480 Here's what you need to work on. 72 00:05:28,480 --> 00:05:31,280 And then they can come back and try that assessment again. 73 00:05:31,280 --> 00:05:35,880 So instead of a few really big assessments, it's lots of small assessments that they can 74 00:05:35,880 --> 00:05:39,120 try basically every week in the class. 75 00:05:39,120 --> 00:05:40,120 Okay. 76 00:05:40,120 --> 00:05:42,600 Stephanie, I'm going to turn to you. 77 00:05:42,600 --> 00:05:47,880 Can you describe a little bit about what you do or what you have been doing in your classroom? 78 00:05:47,880 --> 00:05:51,000 Yeah, certainly. 79 00:05:51,000 --> 00:05:55,440 I come from the middle school and high school space. 80 00:05:55,440 --> 00:06:00,080 So our migrating is a little bit different than you would see in a college setting. 81 00:06:00,080 --> 00:06:06,480 I came to thinking about how migrating practices, about a decade ago, when I started doing some 82 00:06:06,480 --> 00:06:11,960 work around professional learning communities, that's when it was really hot in the K through 83 00:06:11,960 --> 00:06:13,120 12 space. 84 00:06:13,120 --> 00:06:20,760 And two of the questions that PLCs need to ask is, what do you want students to know 85 00:06:20,760 --> 00:06:26,080 and be able to do, and how do you know that they've learned it? 86 00:06:26,080 --> 00:06:29,120 And we couldn't answer those questions. 87 00:06:29,120 --> 00:06:35,120 We couldn't, on a day-to-day basis, know exactly what our students would be able to know and 88 00:06:35,120 --> 00:06:36,640 be able to do. 89 00:06:36,640 --> 00:06:43,040 And my grading practices were not aligned with being able to answer those questions. 90 00:06:43,040 --> 00:06:49,720 So I shifted to really have to first shift my mindset as to, as a teacher, my gradebook 91 00:06:49,720 --> 00:06:54,760 needs to reflect what students know, not have they attended class, not that they show up 92 00:06:54,760 --> 00:06:59,960 on time, not that they do their daily homework assignments or complete their science notebooks 93 00:06:59,960 --> 00:07:05,360 to completion every day, but really focused on what do they really know, and their grades 94 00:07:05,360 --> 00:07:07,000 should reflect that. 95 00:07:07,000 --> 00:07:13,200 I had students whose grades were inflated because they were really good at doing homework. 96 00:07:13,200 --> 00:07:17,440 I also had students whose grades were deflated because they weren't really good at those 97 00:07:17,440 --> 00:07:20,120 things, but they knew the material. 98 00:07:20,120 --> 00:07:25,560 So I needed to have a grade that actually reflected what they knew. 99 00:07:25,560 --> 00:07:32,020 So when I shifted that mindset, it also shifted the conversations I had with students. 100 00:07:32,020 --> 00:07:35,760 It wasn't as Sean was saying about, well, you only got this many points. 101 00:07:35,760 --> 00:07:41,080 It was, what evidence have you provided me that you have learned this? 102 00:07:41,080 --> 00:07:47,160 And I provide, in my space, multiple opportunities to show me what they know. 103 00:07:47,160 --> 00:07:53,600 I will grade labs and I will grade projects that provide a creative space for them to 104 00:07:53,600 --> 00:07:56,120 show me what they know about a topic. 105 00:07:56,120 --> 00:08:01,480 I also still have the traditional tests with the multiple choice, the short answer, the 106 00:08:01,480 --> 00:08:06,920 problem solving as part of the whole suite of assessments. 107 00:08:06,920 --> 00:08:09,000 So I do have averages. 108 00:08:09,000 --> 00:08:13,080 I will have a four point scale for every single assignment. 109 00:08:13,080 --> 00:08:21,160 The four exceeds expectations, and that is an A. A B would be equivalent to a three where 110 00:08:21,160 --> 00:08:22,160 they're proficient. 111 00:08:22,160 --> 00:08:25,000 A two is you're not quite there yet. 112 00:08:25,000 --> 00:08:27,720 You're partially proficient and you're at a two. 113 00:08:27,720 --> 00:08:34,280 And then zeros and ones, I have a one that's a D, but I never accepted that. 114 00:08:34,280 --> 00:08:39,320 If they got a one, I always pushed them and said, nope, I do this again. 115 00:08:39,320 --> 00:08:41,040 So I didn't really have Ds in my class. 116 00:08:41,040 --> 00:08:46,040 I had Fs for kids who just didn't do anything or didn't really show a lot of evidence. 117 00:08:46,040 --> 00:08:50,200 And then I had a lot of Bs and some As and Cs. 118 00:08:50,200 --> 00:08:57,520 So that scale really helped me shift their conversations, especially if they were struggling 119 00:08:57,520 --> 00:08:59,560 and I say, you know what? 120 00:08:59,560 --> 00:09:01,560 You're proficient right now. 121 00:09:01,560 --> 00:09:03,960 You want to push yourself a little bit more? 122 00:09:03,960 --> 00:09:08,840 Or right now, you're really struggling to get that partial proficiency that passes. 123 00:09:08,840 --> 00:09:13,240 So what do we need to do to get you to that C level? 124 00:09:13,240 --> 00:09:15,280 And every kid's conversation was different. 125 00:09:15,280 --> 00:09:16,280 Right. 126 00:09:16,280 --> 00:09:23,240 But I think it was, you know, I also do something similar to what you do in one of my classes. 127 00:09:23,240 --> 00:09:27,800 And it seems like the conversations that you have with the students are like, like Sean 128 00:09:27,800 --> 00:09:30,160 said, not necessarily about the points anymore. 129 00:09:30,160 --> 00:09:34,720 It's like, how do we get over this hump on this particular topic? 130 00:09:34,720 --> 00:09:40,320 And so I think that that's a really valuable shift in the conversation with students so 131 00:09:40,320 --> 00:09:45,720 that you're giving them feedback on their understanding rather than, well, what do we 132 00:09:45,720 --> 00:09:49,160 have to do to get you to a 75? 133 00:09:49,160 --> 00:09:52,640 You know, which is, you know, it's just a very different conversation. 134 00:09:52,640 --> 00:09:59,800 Nick, can you tell us a little bit about what you do in your courses along these lines? 135 00:09:59,800 --> 00:10:00,880 Sure. 136 00:10:00,880 --> 00:10:03,840 Thanks for having me today. 137 00:10:03,840 --> 00:10:09,080 I've gone through, you know, you can think of this arc of, you know, your own character 138 00:10:09,080 --> 00:10:16,640 development and I'm going through this arc and I've gone, I've shifted from a gamified 139 00:10:16,640 --> 00:10:21,360 design course design to where students were really involved with, you know, getting, getting 140 00:10:21,360 --> 00:10:25,400 points and figuring out how to accumulate points to get to the next level and all that 141 00:10:25,400 --> 00:10:26,400 kind of stuff. 142 00:10:26,400 --> 00:10:32,400 And then all of a sudden I realized, geez, just like Sean, I said, these students are 143 00:10:32,400 --> 00:10:34,160 focused on just points. 144 00:10:34,160 --> 00:10:36,360 They don't even, they're not even focused on learning. 145 00:10:36,360 --> 00:10:39,520 So I've got to, I've got to totally change this. 146 00:10:39,520 --> 00:10:46,120 So now I tell my students really on the first day of class that my class is pointless. 147 00:10:46,120 --> 00:10:50,560 I don't use points. 148 00:10:50,560 --> 00:10:57,580 And I'm modeling my course more on the idea of, you can call it equity grading or grading 149 00:10:57,580 --> 00:11:02,560 for growth or I like to sometimes even call it humanistic grading. 150 00:11:02,560 --> 00:11:07,680 We're all humans and we all make mistakes and it's really important to be able to recover 151 00:11:07,680 --> 00:11:08,680 from those mistakes. 152 00:11:08,680 --> 00:11:14,840 And not only that, you know, telling students that, hey, we learn from mistakes, but if 153 00:11:14,840 --> 00:11:21,680 we're grading students like on their homework and they, you know, oh, they didn't get the 154 00:11:21,680 --> 00:11:22,680 homework correct. 155 00:11:22,680 --> 00:11:29,080 Now you're actually punishing them for trying to learn and making a mistake. 156 00:11:29,080 --> 00:11:35,720 So instead of having a zero to 100 scale, kind of like Stephanie said, I use a zero 157 00:11:35,720 --> 00:11:39,420 to a four and I don't tell, I tell students it's not points. 158 00:11:39,420 --> 00:11:40,560 It's a four point. 159 00:11:40,560 --> 00:11:41,920 So it's a grade, right? 160 00:11:41,920 --> 00:11:46,240 Our final grades are, you know, you get a four point, 3.5, three point. 161 00:11:46,240 --> 00:11:48,680 And so I'm telling students, I'm putting a grade on your paper. 162 00:11:48,680 --> 00:11:51,280 I'm not putting points on there. 163 00:11:51,280 --> 00:11:55,840 And just a short conversation with students saying, if I use a hundred point scale, right, 164 00:11:55,840 --> 00:11:57,920 zero to 60 is failing. 165 00:11:57,920 --> 00:12:03,280 60% of a grading scale would be failing. 166 00:12:03,280 --> 00:12:08,980 And that's why I bring up the concept of actually the original F-bomb, which would be a zero 167 00:12:08,980 --> 00:12:17,480 on a large assignment that wipes you out, which is pretty demotivating to students. 168 00:12:17,480 --> 00:12:23,640 And grading, really you should think of grading as how do I use a grade to motivate students? 169 00:12:23,640 --> 00:12:31,400 Never, never in the history of education has a threat of a zero been motivating. 170 00:12:31,400 --> 00:12:33,440 It's demotivating. 171 00:12:33,440 --> 00:12:38,920 So we kind of have to remove that and really rethink what we're doing with grades and how 172 00:12:38,920 --> 00:12:41,120 we're doing those. 173 00:12:41,120 --> 00:12:42,880 Do I have homework assignments? 174 00:12:42,880 --> 00:12:44,320 Sure, I do. 175 00:12:44,320 --> 00:12:51,880 But instead of giving students points on those, I give students, I use, it's called an EMRN 176 00:12:51,880 --> 00:12:54,440 scale and you can Google that. 177 00:12:54,440 --> 00:13:01,560 There's a rubric and it takes you about two seconds to grade a paper because you're going, 178 00:13:01,560 --> 00:13:04,960 it's almost like a binomial scale. 179 00:13:04,960 --> 00:13:05,960 Did they turn it in? 180 00:13:05,960 --> 00:13:06,960 Did they not? 181 00:13:06,960 --> 00:13:07,960 Did they do this? 182 00:13:07,960 --> 00:13:08,960 Did they do that? 183 00:13:08,960 --> 00:13:15,840 So it's an EMRN, which is exceeds, meets, needs revision or not accessible. 184 00:13:15,840 --> 00:13:22,600 And that's usually the end is usually student didn't turn it in. 185 00:13:22,600 --> 00:13:30,180 And so kind of like Stephanie had mentioned, I'm only grading what students have learned, 186 00:13:30,180 --> 00:13:31,780 their academic knowledge. 187 00:13:31,780 --> 00:13:35,480 So that discounts all formative assessment. 188 00:13:35,480 --> 00:13:40,120 And so now I have to have conversations with students of what is summative assessment? 189 00:13:40,120 --> 00:13:42,760 What is formative assessment? 190 00:13:42,760 --> 00:13:47,280 And those are, you have to spend time with that, but I think it's time well spent. 191 00:13:47,280 --> 00:13:56,520 And students start to understand what they're responsible for and why formative assessment 192 00:13:56,520 --> 00:13:58,920 is necessary. 193 00:13:58,920 --> 00:14:02,360 So I'm giving students feedback on those homeworks. 194 00:14:02,360 --> 00:14:05,600 And I don't have a lot of students like, oh, I don't have to do the homework. 195 00:14:05,600 --> 00:14:06,960 I'm never doing the homework. 196 00:14:06,960 --> 00:14:12,920 They still do because they want to know where they are sitting by the time they get to the 197 00:14:12,920 --> 00:14:15,280 summative assessment. 198 00:14:15,280 --> 00:14:22,400 So it appears maybe on first blush that the summative assessment then becomes incredibly 199 00:14:22,400 --> 00:14:23,400 high stakes. 200 00:14:23,400 --> 00:14:29,440 You're only grading on summative assessment, but then you give students a little relief 201 00:14:29,440 --> 00:14:35,160 valve and saying, look, we don't all learn at the same rate, right? 202 00:14:35,160 --> 00:14:43,920 Four weeks that my first unit is four weeks is an artificial timeline. 203 00:14:43,920 --> 00:14:45,740 Some of you are going to take five weeks to learn. 204 00:14:45,740 --> 00:14:48,440 Some of you are going to take three. 205 00:14:48,440 --> 00:14:53,320 And so if at four weeks you haven't learned it and you don't do well on the summative 206 00:14:53,320 --> 00:14:57,600 test, well, that summative test just became formative for you. 207 00:14:57,600 --> 00:15:00,520 You're going to work through and you're going to show me that you can learn this stuff in 208 00:15:00,520 --> 00:15:03,720 five weeks maybe. 209 00:15:03,720 --> 00:15:09,480 It kind of shifts, it almost shifts everything into almost like a one room schoolhouse. 210 00:15:09,480 --> 00:15:11,200 You've got students at different levels. 211 00:15:11,200 --> 00:15:15,080 You have to realize that there are students at different levels. 212 00:15:15,080 --> 00:15:19,000 And those students can actually help one another. 213 00:15:19,000 --> 00:15:23,400 The ones that know it can get done fast and maybe turn around and help the students that 214 00:15:23,400 --> 00:15:30,040 are behind them in their learning curve to help them out. 215 00:15:30,040 --> 00:15:36,760 So it really shifts the way I've looked at classes, the way I've looked at students. 216 00:15:36,760 --> 00:15:42,000 And I've really appreciated kind of the process that I've gone through to get to the point 217 00:15:42,000 --> 00:15:46,440 where I'm really focusing on what do students know? 218 00:15:46,440 --> 00:15:52,760 How can they show that to me and maintain student motivation all the way throughout 219 00:15:52,760 --> 00:15:54,680 the semester or throughout the course? 220 00:15:54,680 --> 00:15:55,680 Yeah. 221 00:15:55,680 --> 00:16:01,520 So I mean, one of the things that all three of you have mentioned here is revision of 222 00:16:01,520 --> 00:16:02,520 what students are doing. 223 00:16:02,520 --> 00:16:09,280 And as I mentioned, I do something similar to this non-traditional grading scheme where 224 00:16:09,280 --> 00:16:14,320 I have in one course a couple of learning objectives. 225 00:16:14,320 --> 00:16:16,520 Actually it's a day 10 learning objectives. 226 00:16:16,520 --> 00:16:21,440 And throughout the semester, those learning objectives are touched upon. 227 00:16:21,440 --> 00:16:25,860 They're not all touched upon in the first week, but throughout the semester, we're going 228 00:16:25,860 --> 00:16:30,520 to hit them and they will show up on exams. 229 00:16:30,520 --> 00:16:36,120 And so each exam question is labeled, well, this is learning objective seven. 230 00:16:36,120 --> 00:16:42,440 And so that the students know that they need to, here are my places where, oh, I wasn't 231 00:16:42,440 --> 00:16:46,680 doing very well in this learning objective in the quizzes. 232 00:16:46,680 --> 00:16:50,720 So in that early formative assessment, so I really need to do better. 233 00:16:50,720 --> 00:16:53,680 Or in the first exam, I didn't do well. 234 00:16:53,680 --> 00:16:54,780 And we've talked about this. 235 00:16:54,780 --> 00:16:59,800 So I'm going to really work hard on this particular area. 236 00:16:59,800 --> 00:17:05,600 So it allows the students to target things that they don't know well more so than the 237 00:17:05,600 --> 00:17:08,360 things that they do know well. 238 00:17:08,360 --> 00:17:12,320 And again, it gets back to something that we were talking about. 239 00:17:12,320 --> 00:17:17,520 It's like having the students know what they know and also have them recognize what they 240 00:17:17,520 --> 00:17:21,080 don't know well is very important. 241 00:17:21,080 --> 00:17:26,440 You know, again, all of the all of the buzzwords that we've all been using right now all sound 242 00:17:26,440 --> 00:17:32,880 very much like the things that people tend to talk about anyway, being able for students 243 00:17:32,880 --> 00:17:38,720 to reflect on what they're doing, be able to revise their thinking, being able to talk 244 00:17:38,720 --> 00:17:44,440 with one another to share understanding. 245 00:17:44,440 --> 00:17:51,040 So I want to come back to sort of a little bit about an idea. 246 00:17:51,040 --> 00:17:58,240 You know, now that we've all described what we're talking about or what we each do. 247 00:17:58,240 --> 00:18:01,960 And we've all sort of mentioned some of the positives. 248 00:18:01,960 --> 00:18:07,360 What's it been like to try to implement this at your institution? 249 00:18:07,360 --> 00:18:10,880 And I'll allow any of the three of you to jump in first. 250 00:18:10,880 --> 00:18:16,720 Stephanie, you probably had more interesting conversations in a public school than those 251 00:18:16,720 --> 00:18:19,800 of us who teach in higher ed have had to deal with. 252 00:18:19,800 --> 00:18:23,840 But you know, maybe a blessing and a curse there. 253 00:18:23,840 --> 00:18:28,200 So tell us a little bit about what the response has been like. 254 00:18:28,200 --> 00:18:34,240 Yeah, the initially I was just kind of a lone eagle kind of trying it on my own, trying 255 00:18:34,240 --> 00:18:39,280 to work within our current systems to go to this four point scale. 256 00:18:39,280 --> 00:18:45,600 And as my administrators were watching what I was doing, they wanted to bring this schoolwide. 257 00:18:45,600 --> 00:18:51,880 So we did end up making this a school policy of standards based grading. 258 00:18:51,880 --> 00:18:55,180 And we worked probably close to six or seven years. 259 00:18:55,180 --> 00:18:58,160 And that's now gone district wide as well. 260 00:18:58,160 --> 00:19:03,980 All our high schools are now implementing standards based grading throughout. 261 00:19:03,980 --> 00:19:09,720 But some of the biggest pushback we got was teachers really not liking that formative 262 00:19:09,720 --> 00:19:11,720 assessments when graded. 263 00:19:11,720 --> 00:19:16,520 They reported that or they were graded, but it's a very small portion of their grade ended 264 00:19:16,520 --> 00:19:18,880 up being 20% of their grade. 265 00:19:18,880 --> 00:19:24,560 They reported that students just didn't do their work and then just waited till the test 266 00:19:24,560 --> 00:19:26,360 kind of wing it type attitude. 267 00:19:26,360 --> 00:19:27,360 Right. 268 00:19:27,360 --> 00:19:28,360 Yeah. 269 00:19:28,360 --> 00:19:30,060 Because they also then had the retake option. 270 00:19:30,060 --> 00:19:33,960 So they want to study for the test, they want to do the formatives, and then they would 271 00:19:33,960 --> 00:19:39,960 go to the test, see where they got, they get to see the test, and then, oh, now I can retake. 272 00:19:39,960 --> 00:19:42,200 I did not have those problems in my classroom. 273 00:19:42,200 --> 00:19:46,400 And I think that's really how I framed the formatives. 274 00:19:46,400 --> 00:19:51,680 Kind of like what you were saying, Alex, that it gives them information on how they're doing. 275 00:19:51,680 --> 00:19:54,000 And I also responded to it. 276 00:19:54,000 --> 00:19:57,560 When they didn't do well, I would have private conversations with them. 277 00:19:57,560 --> 00:20:00,600 Or as a class, they didn't do well the next day. 278 00:20:00,600 --> 00:20:01,600 We didn't get this. 279 00:20:01,600 --> 00:20:03,800 We needed to go over. 280 00:20:03,800 --> 00:20:06,720 So it became integral into what our everyday work was. 281 00:20:06,720 --> 00:20:10,240 And so the kids then did their formative assessments. 282 00:20:10,240 --> 00:20:13,240 The retakes, I made them work for it. 283 00:20:13,240 --> 00:20:15,240 They didn't automatically just get a retake. 284 00:20:15,240 --> 00:20:19,380 They had to do some work to show me that they worked on reviewing the material. 285 00:20:19,380 --> 00:20:21,880 And then they were able to get the retake. 286 00:20:21,880 --> 00:20:26,920 So that's kind of how I solved both of those pushbacks I was getting from my case. 287 00:20:26,920 --> 00:20:27,920 Yeah. 288 00:20:27,920 --> 00:20:40,080 It's interesting, you were saying, about the quizzes and students not necessarily working 289 00:20:40,080 --> 00:20:46,560 hard initially because they just wanted to see how it went on the exam. 290 00:20:46,560 --> 00:20:53,320 I find that that is a student who doesn't necessarily jump in and try out formative 291 00:20:53,320 --> 00:20:54,320 assessment. 292 00:20:54,320 --> 00:20:59,480 And like we've been talking about, you need to start to explain to students what is the 293 00:20:59,480 --> 00:21:02,760 difference between formative and summative assessment. 294 00:21:02,760 --> 00:21:08,280 And I've had other cases where you give out a quiz and everybody gets a two. 295 00:21:08,280 --> 00:21:12,080 And it's like, this is not where we wanted to be. 296 00:21:12,080 --> 00:21:18,340 So I say, it's also formative for me because it tells me where my class is at, which is 297 00:21:18,340 --> 00:21:24,240 just as important as you knowing where you as an individual are at in the class. 298 00:21:24,240 --> 00:21:25,240 So right. 299 00:21:25,240 --> 00:21:36,400 And if I can jump in, as far as my institution, my institution really supports doing cool 300 00:21:36,400 --> 00:21:46,680 things, doing new things, taking risks, not fantastic risks, but well thought out risks. 301 00:21:46,680 --> 00:21:51,680 And I presented what I'm doing to our board. 302 00:21:51,680 --> 00:21:57,800 And I got positive feedback and positive reception from that. 303 00:21:57,800 --> 00:22:04,000 And actually, because the local news was there and they wrote a story on it. 304 00:22:04,000 --> 00:22:09,280 And I've been actually getting feedback from community members that are really excited 305 00:22:09,280 --> 00:22:14,320 by what I'm doing and have had feedback and conversations with those community members. 306 00:22:14,320 --> 00:22:16,560 So it's been fun. 307 00:22:16,560 --> 00:22:20,240 Has it all been gumdrops and rainbows? 308 00:22:20,240 --> 00:22:21,240 No. 309 00:22:21,240 --> 00:22:26,880 There are certainly maybe, as Stephanie mentioned, there are certain faculty members that are 310 00:22:26,880 --> 00:22:27,880 like, you can't do this. 311 00:22:27,880 --> 00:22:29,640 This is not going to work. 312 00:22:29,640 --> 00:22:31,240 You can't do this. 313 00:22:31,240 --> 00:22:34,360 We're not seeing it follow through with students. 314 00:22:34,360 --> 00:22:39,240 I'm doing A&P, which is for many of our students is pre-nursing. 315 00:22:39,240 --> 00:22:45,080 And so getting pushback from perhaps the nursing program, saying, well, you've got to make 316 00:22:45,080 --> 00:22:49,160 sure that this happens and this happens. 317 00:22:49,160 --> 00:22:56,560 And as far as students go, students, I find that not only am I an educator, but I'm also 318 00:22:56,560 --> 00:22:58,120 a marketer. 319 00:22:58,120 --> 00:23:00,400 And I market what I'm doing. 320 00:23:00,400 --> 00:23:04,640 That means I have to tell students exactly why I'm doing what I'm doing. 321 00:23:04,640 --> 00:23:10,360 And I make mention of the fact that, hey, if you can get a four point on an exam without 322 00:23:10,360 --> 00:23:13,680 doing any homework, good for you. 323 00:23:13,680 --> 00:23:16,080 You've learned it somehow, some way. 324 00:23:16,080 --> 00:23:21,800 And just that I hate to use the word, I wasn't paternalistic in saying, you have to do all 325 00:23:21,800 --> 00:23:22,880 the homework. 326 00:23:22,880 --> 00:23:25,080 You figured it out. 327 00:23:25,080 --> 00:23:26,280 Great. 328 00:23:26,280 --> 00:23:32,480 But if you don't do well and you didn't do the homework, that's another conversation. 329 00:23:32,480 --> 00:23:37,200 And those are things that students need to figure out, I think, on their own. 330 00:23:37,200 --> 00:23:41,200 But I also mentioned to students that, look, yeah, you can retake the exam. 331 00:23:41,200 --> 00:23:42,920 How many times do you want to take it? 332 00:23:42,920 --> 00:23:46,640 Do you want to take that exam four times, five times? 333 00:23:46,640 --> 00:23:49,680 And most of them know, I want to take it once and be done. 334 00:23:49,680 --> 00:23:55,840 And so I'm trying to give them that opportunity. 335 00:23:55,840 --> 00:23:57,440 And maybe we need to look at testing different. 336 00:23:57,440 --> 00:24:01,240 And I've said, we're going to do a pretest. 337 00:24:01,240 --> 00:24:04,800 If you do well on the pretest, then you don't have to take the test. 338 00:24:04,800 --> 00:24:09,400 And that motivates students to do well the first time. 339 00:24:09,400 --> 00:24:15,480 And I think maybe, as you mentioned, Alex, testing actually really should be informing 340 00:24:15,480 --> 00:24:20,200 us as instructors of how we're doing as well. 341 00:24:20,200 --> 00:24:26,880 And now my mind is expanding and blowing up because I'm thinking, I've read something 342 00:24:26,880 --> 00:24:29,720 else. 343 00:24:29,720 --> 00:24:35,160 Final exams should actually be two to three weeks before the end of the semester. 344 00:24:35,160 --> 00:24:41,960 So you find out what you've done wrong, and you fix that in the last two to three weeks. 345 00:24:41,960 --> 00:24:45,800 So sometimes we think of exams as being the end of the unit. 346 00:24:45,800 --> 00:24:49,320 Actually it should be maybe the middle of the unit to figure out what students need 347 00:24:49,320 --> 00:24:54,160 to work on to get to know what they need to know. 348 00:24:54,160 --> 00:24:59,160 And I think this kind of grade, as soon as you start in this process, and I'm not done. 349 00:24:59,160 --> 00:25:06,480 Alex, I'd love to have all of my exam questions have objective seven next to it. 350 00:25:06,480 --> 00:25:07,480 They don't yet. 351 00:25:07,480 --> 00:25:09,200 And that's some place I've got to go. 352 00:25:09,200 --> 00:25:11,240 So this takes a long time to get there. 353 00:25:11,240 --> 00:25:17,280 But I think as soon as you start the process, you realize, oh my gosh, I have been really 354 00:25:17,280 --> 00:25:20,360 destroying students for no reason for so many years. 355 00:25:20,360 --> 00:25:27,760 If I give this student an F, I'm affecting perhaps their long-term earning potential. 356 00:25:27,760 --> 00:25:28,760 I don't want that. 357 00:25:28,760 --> 00:25:30,280 I want them to be successful. 358 00:25:30,280 --> 00:25:32,640 And how can I get them to be successful? 359 00:25:32,640 --> 00:25:34,320 Will all students be successful? 360 00:25:34,320 --> 00:25:35,320 Probably not. 361 00:25:35,320 --> 00:25:38,960 But I want it to be on them, not on me. 362 00:25:38,960 --> 00:25:44,440 You want to be able to help the ones who can be helped and want to be helped. 363 00:25:44,440 --> 00:25:49,840 It's interesting when I said that I labeled every question by a particular learning objective 364 00:25:49,840 --> 00:25:52,680 for the course. 365 00:25:52,680 --> 00:25:57,840 It was a very simple thing that I did simply so that I could give them at the end of each 366 00:25:57,840 --> 00:26:02,360 test, say, oh, here were the learning objectives that were covered. 367 00:26:02,360 --> 00:26:08,720 And then I realized in one exam that I had only one question that covered one of the 368 00:26:08,720 --> 00:26:10,200 important learning objectives. 369 00:26:10,200 --> 00:26:16,520 So I was like, oh, I should really label these before I give them the exam so that I know 370 00:26:16,520 --> 00:26:21,480 that I am covering that on the exam. 371 00:26:21,480 --> 00:26:23,440 We've spent a bit of time on this. 372 00:26:23,440 --> 00:26:27,260 And there's only one question on this in the exam. 373 00:26:27,260 --> 00:26:33,800 And then I also realized that I had had questions that I would historically put on an exam that 374 00:26:33,800 --> 00:26:38,240 really didn't get at something that I wanted to get at. 375 00:26:38,240 --> 00:26:40,480 So yeah, absolutely. 376 00:26:40,480 --> 00:26:45,360 Like you say, it really makes you think more about what you're doing. 377 00:26:45,360 --> 00:26:47,480 So Sean, we haven't heard from you. 378 00:26:47,480 --> 00:26:51,040 You teach at an institution where there might be a little bit of pressure on some of your 379 00:26:51,040 --> 00:26:55,200 students to do well in general chemistry. 380 00:26:55,200 --> 00:26:56,200 Absolutely. 381 00:26:56,200 --> 00:27:01,560 And so I wonder what kind of pushback you've had there. 382 00:27:01,560 --> 00:27:05,040 So most of the students who come through my class are not chemistry majors. 383 00:27:05,040 --> 00:27:10,400 They're taking chemistry class because they have to. 384 00:27:10,400 --> 00:27:15,060 They're really put in a position of coming to take this class. 385 00:27:15,060 --> 00:27:16,160 It's a burden on them. 386 00:27:16,160 --> 00:27:21,080 It is a flaming hoop that they have to jump through. 387 00:27:21,080 --> 00:27:22,400 And that's where they're coming from. 388 00:27:22,400 --> 00:27:25,320 And they've got very legitimate career objectives. 389 00:27:25,320 --> 00:27:30,400 And I'm trying to get them to be at least a little bit interested in the chemistry and 390 00:27:30,400 --> 00:27:33,400 try to get them on board to the learning process. 391 00:27:33,400 --> 00:27:40,440 And moving away from a traditional grading approach has really helped me communicate 392 00:27:40,440 --> 00:27:44,640 with my students so much better. 393 00:27:44,640 --> 00:27:50,720 So I've loved hearing some common themes from everybody here, both Nick and Stephanie. 394 00:27:50,720 --> 00:27:57,200 And I all chose and you chose a four point system for communicating with our students. 395 00:27:57,200 --> 00:28:00,100 And so I've also got a four point system. 396 00:28:00,100 --> 00:28:05,000 So when students come to me and they say, oh, I did really bad on the last assessment, 397 00:28:05,000 --> 00:28:09,480 I can say, okay, well, what score did you get? 398 00:28:09,480 --> 00:28:13,080 Oh, I got three out of four. 399 00:28:13,080 --> 00:28:16,400 Okay, I've got great information all of a sudden. 400 00:28:16,400 --> 00:28:18,480 Who is a student and where are they coming from? 401 00:28:18,480 --> 00:28:24,880 So in my class, the questions have different levels of sophistication from the retrieval 402 00:28:24,880 --> 00:28:29,480 level questions that are about the basics, the information you need, going up to the 403 00:28:29,480 --> 00:28:34,800 highest level questions that are very open ended and ask students to be creative. 404 00:28:34,800 --> 00:28:38,640 So if a student comes and says they got a three out of four, that means the piece they 405 00:28:38,640 --> 00:28:46,400 still need to work on are the communicating their thinking, explaining a full justification, 406 00:28:46,400 --> 00:28:49,340 being creative and taking an idea in a new direction. 407 00:28:49,340 --> 00:28:53,160 So those are the types of things I can have those high level conversations with students. 408 00:28:53,160 --> 00:28:57,000 And at the same time, if a student comes to me and says, I did really badly, I got a zero 409 00:28:57,000 --> 00:28:58,000 out of four. 410 00:28:58,000 --> 00:29:02,680 Boom, I know right away, this student, okay, we need to start at the beginning, we need 411 00:29:02,680 --> 00:29:07,120 to start with the basic facts and ideas and formulas. 412 00:29:07,120 --> 00:29:12,960 And don't worry about that other stuff yet, the really sophisticated problem solving that 413 00:29:12,960 --> 00:29:14,320 can come later. 414 00:29:14,320 --> 00:29:19,360 Let's focus on the basic pieces, the basic understanding, and let's focus on those two 415 00:29:19,360 --> 00:29:21,200 levels to begin with. 416 00:29:21,200 --> 00:29:25,200 So it's helped me communicate with my students so much more clearly. 417 00:29:25,200 --> 00:29:29,640 And it's because like you're saying, everything's aligned to a learning objective, I can say, 418 00:29:29,640 --> 00:29:32,780 this is the topic, let's get that learning objective out. 419 00:29:32,780 --> 00:29:36,200 Let's underline all of the words in that learning objective. 420 00:29:36,200 --> 00:29:41,200 Did you miss some, maybe there are just some ideas that just weren't on your radar. 421 00:29:41,200 --> 00:29:45,960 So that helping me to communicate with my students has really helped them buy into the 422 00:29:45,960 --> 00:29:47,640 process. 423 00:29:47,640 --> 00:29:52,920 So from the students, the vast majority of the feedback that I get is really positive. 424 00:29:52,920 --> 00:29:58,440 I mean, it's the thing that they kind of like best about my course, honestly, the students 425 00:29:58,440 --> 00:30:02,780 will say, I feel so much less stressed. 426 00:30:02,780 --> 00:30:06,320 And for me, that's a wonderful compliment all on its own, because stress is bad for 427 00:30:06,320 --> 00:30:10,140 learning, is really bad for learning. 428 00:30:10,140 --> 00:30:16,360 They wish all their classes had the ability to retake an assessment. 429 00:30:16,360 --> 00:30:23,920 There is a small fraction of the students who complain about, who share the complaint 430 00:30:23,920 --> 00:30:30,000 that they are a little frustrated by the proficient, not proficient grading. 431 00:30:30,000 --> 00:30:31,000 There's no partial credit. 432 00:30:31,000 --> 00:30:35,780 They'll say things like, you know, I feel like I learned so much, but I didn't get a 433 00:30:35,780 --> 00:30:39,800 good grade because I didn't have any partial credit. 434 00:30:39,800 --> 00:30:43,960 So they're still feeling that frustration. 435 00:30:43,960 --> 00:30:46,160 But it's really quite a small fraction of students. 436 00:30:46,160 --> 00:30:52,200 And by and large, students are on board and are really positive behind it. 437 00:30:52,200 --> 00:30:54,760 Now how are other faculty responding? 438 00:30:54,760 --> 00:30:56,520 That's an evolving story. 439 00:30:56,520 --> 00:30:58,120 That's a different question. 440 00:30:58,120 --> 00:31:00,160 That's a totally other question. 441 00:31:00,160 --> 00:31:06,960 And I'm really trying to encourage the other chemistry faculty to try considering a grading 442 00:31:06,960 --> 00:31:13,200 approach that's not the same exams that they've given for 20 years or whatever it might be. 443 00:31:13,200 --> 00:31:15,120 And that's an ongoing conversation. 444 00:31:15,120 --> 00:31:17,800 And I'm having to just share with folks what we're doing. 445 00:31:17,800 --> 00:31:20,280 No, look, really, this works. 446 00:31:20,280 --> 00:31:25,000 Allowing students to retake assessments doesn't mean that everyone gets an A and leaves the 447 00:31:25,000 --> 00:31:30,040 class, nor does opening, you know, asking really challenging questions. 448 00:31:30,040 --> 00:31:32,160 It also doesn't mean that everybody flunks the class. 449 00:31:32,160 --> 00:31:35,120 You know, there's still a really broad range of students. 450 00:31:35,120 --> 00:31:39,820 I feel like I can challenge students to really show me what they can do. 451 00:31:39,820 --> 00:31:44,800 But I also have this, you know, the students who have, you know, they just want to pass 452 00:31:44,800 --> 00:31:45,800 the course. 453 00:31:45,800 --> 00:31:46,800 Right. 454 00:31:46,800 --> 00:31:48,480 It's really clearly articulated to them. 455 00:31:48,480 --> 00:31:49,800 Here's what you need to do to pass. 456 00:31:49,800 --> 00:31:52,680 And here's what the expectations are. 457 00:31:52,680 --> 00:31:55,840 So that that's the mix of how things have gone for me. 458 00:31:55,840 --> 00:31:58,520 Yeah, it's interesting. 459 00:31:58,520 --> 00:32:04,360 Because one of the things that I think, particularly when you talk to faculty who've been around 460 00:32:04,360 --> 00:32:13,640 for a while and they don't necessarily want to change, one of the big keys is somebody 461 00:32:13,640 --> 00:32:19,800 had said this before, shifting the mindset to what do the students know? 462 00:32:19,800 --> 00:32:27,360 And, you know, for some faculty members, unfortunately, that's not, you know, that's not something 463 00:32:27,360 --> 00:32:32,880 that they think about because they think they're thinking about just delivering material and 464 00:32:32,880 --> 00:32:35,280 then seeing what the students can do with it. 465 00:32:35,280 --> 00:32:41,600 You know, and so but I'm pretty sure that, you know, most of the people out there really 466 00:32:41,600 --> 00:32:47,120 are considering what what do students know? 467 00:32:47,120 --> 00:32:52,320 And you know, these different, you know, again, the alternatives to traditional grading, as 468 00:32:52,320 --> 00:33:00,800 we're calling it, these standards based methods really help us as instructors know where the 469 00:33:00,800 --> 00:33:03,480 students are at. 470 00:33:03,480 --> 00:33:09,120 One of the other things that I will say, you know, depending on your field and what you're 471 00:33:09,120 --> 00:33:12,720 what you're teaching, this may or may not be an issue. 472 00:33:12,720 --> 00:33:17,400 But you know, teaching general chemistry, you have a lot of students come in who are 473 00:33:17,400 --> 00:33:18,400 math phobic. 474 00:33:18,400 --> 00:33:19,400 Okay. 475 00:33:19,400 --> 00:33:25,360 You know, I'm sure Stephanie, you had this, you know, in the middle school a lot where 476 00:33:25,360 --> 00:33:30,760 students were afraid of the math that you were asking them to do. 477 00:33:30,760 --> 00:33:37,600 And so what I would do is say, for example, in a stoichiometry problem or balancing equations 478 00:33:37,600 --> 00:33:43,680 or figuring out how much material was generated from a particular reaction, I actually would 479 00:33:43,680 --> 00:33:47,680 separate out in grading that question. 480 00:33:47,680 --> 00:33:53,480 How well did they understand the setting up of that problem and sort of moving the symbols 481 00:33:53,480 --> 00:34:00,880 around against doing the math and getting the significant figures right and using all 482 00:34:00,880 --> 00:34:01,880 of that stuff. 483 00:34:01,880 --> 00:34:08,100 And if you separate that out, you find that students really, you know, some of them know 484 00:34:08,100 --> 00:34:11,040 how to do the stoichiometry. 485 00:34:11,040 --> 00:34:14,800 They just have trouble as soon as you put digits in front of them. 486 00:34:14,800 --> 00:34:21,120 And so, you know, it was eye opening for a couple of my students in this one class where 487 00:34:21,120 --> 00:34:23,920 they're like, huh, I get this part. 488 00:34:23,920 --> 00:34:28,000 It's just, you know, figuring out what I'm supposed to do with the numbers at the end, 489 00:34:28,000 --> 00:34:30,560 which is the math part. 490 00:34:30,560 --> 00:34:32,480 And I separate those out in a learning objective. 491 00:34:32,480 --> 00:34:36,480 And all of a sudden they realize, oh, I can do this. 492 00:34:36,480 --> 00:34:39,600 It's just I need to pay more attention to my math skills. 493 00:34:39,600 --> 00:34:44,480 Yeah, I get your point about math phobia. 494 00:34:44,480 --> 00:34:50,240 I think in the middle school and high school, we also see that sometimes what we're asking 495 00:34:50,240 --> 00:34:54,840 students to do mathematically is beyond what they've gotten to in math. 496 00:34:54,840 --> 00:35:01,080 And so it's really important that we are aligning our math objectives and our math expectations 497 00:35:01,080 --> 00:35:08,040 with the math teachers and making sure we're not asking them to do more than they've conceptually 498 00:35:08,040 --> 00:35:10,600 gotten to in their math classes. 499 00:35:10,600 --> 00:35:20,320 Another way that I get around the math phobia or maybe a disconnect in math abilities is 500 00:35:20,320 --> 00:35:26,440 I think what we see more in high school and middle school is separating the objectives. 501 00:35:26,440 --> 00:35:32,440 So I have an objective that is more conceptual for that unit. 502 00:35:32,440 --> 00:35:36,200 And then I also have an objective that is mathematical. 503 00:35:36,200 --> 00:35:42,560 So can, for example, in a physics class, can you manipulate F equals MA? 504 00:35:42,560 --> 00:35:47,720 Can you read a word problem and identify the different variables and solve for an unknown? 505 00:35:47,720 --> 00:35:54,600 And then a different objective that really is assessing the Newton's laws in a more conceptual 506 00:35:54,600 --> 00:35:57,040 and conceptual way. 507 00:35:57,040 --> 00:36:02,760 And then if they're struggling in either one of those, I know where to put my attention 508 00:36:02,760 --> 00:36:04,840 in when I'm helping them. 509 00:36:04,840 --> 00:36:11,760 So in my revision process, they're not retaking the whole test on, let's say, Newton's laws. 510 00:36:11,760 --> 00:36:16,120 They're either focusing their attention on the math or I'm focusing their attention on 511 00:36:16,120 --> 00:36:21,320 the conceptual and I'm really targeting what they need help with by separating the math 512 00:36:21,320 --> 00:36:24,160 from the concepts. 513 00:36:24,160 --> 00:36:34,480 So right, right, and similarly, having clearly articulated learning objectives helps make 514 00:36:34,480 --> 00:36:40,280 the grading of open ended questions much more straightforward. 515 00:36:40,280 --> 00:36:43,720 So I've had colleagues come up to me and say, how can you ask an open ended question? 516 00:36:43,720 --> 00:36:47,320 Because they could answer in any way that they want. 517 00:36:47,320 --> 00:36:54,120 And having a specific learning objective means that I'm looking for proficiency at that learning 518 00:36:54,120 --> 00:36:55,120 objective. 519 00:36:55,120 --> 00:37:00,480 If they've given some other answer that takes the question in some direction I didn't anticipate 520 00:37:00,480 --> 00:37:05,240 that is not really addressing the learning objective, well, maybe it's a great answer, 521 00:37:05,240 --> 00:37:06,840 but it's not the learning. 522 00:37:06,840 --> 00:37:11,080 It's not addressing showing, demonstrating, giving me some evidence that you're proficient 523 00:37:11,080 --> 00:37:12,920 at this learning objective. 524 00:37:12,920 --> 00:37:18,160 And it just took all of the gamesmanship from the grading perspective, which has allowed 525 00:37:18,160 --> 00:37:24,080 me to ask a whole new kind of set of questions that are just a lot more fun and interesting 526 00:37:24,080 --> 00:37:28,320 and can ask students to take what they know and kind of use it in a fun way. 527 00:37:28,320 --> 00:37:29,720 Where do you want to take? 528 00:37:29,720 --> 00:37:37,400 If you could change the rules of quantum mechanics, how would that work out for the periodic table? 529 00:37:37,400 --> 00:37:42,620 So opening up something like that is just a lot more fun and engaging for the students 530 00:37:42,620 --> 00:37:46,860 who really want to try to perform at the highest levels of, you know, demonstrate really high 531 00:37:46,860 --> 00:37:50,600 level critical thinking skills. 532 00:37:50,600 --> 00:37:55,840 And kind of piggybacking on that a little bit, and I know I think Alex, you said you're going 533 00:37:55,840 --> 00:38:01,640 to put some of the resources that we kind of use in a kind of references or works cited 534 00:38:01,640 --> 00:38:03,600 kind of thing for the podcast. 535 00:38:03,600 --> 00:38:07,200 Yeah, we'll have that on the show notes. 536 00:38:07,200 --> 00:38:08,200 Yeah. 537 00:38:08,200 --> 00:38:14,920 And so one of the other kind of pieces that I do besides, you know, trying to do this 538 00:38:14,920 --> 00:38:22,520 humanistic grading, grading for growth is getting students to start assessing themselves. 539 00:38:22,520 --> 00:38:25,800 And that one that takes some of the burden off yourself, right? 540 00:38:25,800 --> 00:38:26,800 The students. 541 00:38:26,800 --> 00:38:33,440 But if if you're learning objectives, your learning outcomes are clearly defined, which 542 00:38:33,440 --> 00:38:39,200 of course I am still working on, which gets much harder than it seems. 543 00:38:39,200 --> 00:38:46,280 You can I give students tracking sheets, here's the objective, where do you think you are? 544 00:38:46,280 --> 00:38:49,960 Grade yourself for three, two, one. 545 00:38:49,960 --> 00:38:55,040 And students have to turn those tracking sheets in when they turn in exams. 546 00:38:55,040 --> 00:39:00,880 And I also ask them as they're turning in their exam or their their work, whatever, what grade 547 00:39:00,880 --> 00:39:02,720 do you think you got on this? 548 00:39:02,720 --> 00:39:08,760 Oh, and then and then we turn around and say, this is the grade you think you got a four 549 00:39:08,760 --> 00:39:11,600 point, you got a three point. 550 00:39:11,600 --> 00:39:14,400 Now we have right now there's some discord here. 551 00:39:14,400 --> 00:39:15,720 How are we going to fix this? 552 00:39:15,720 --> 00:39:20,800 Why do you think you so I'm having students explain themselves as well. 553 00:39:20,800 --> 00:39:27,800 Again, that takes time in your class to to to train students how to self assess. 554 00:39:27,800 --> 00:39:33,240 But that's a really important skill that we're going to send students out into the world 555 00:39:33,240 --> 00:39:34,240 with. 556 00:39:34,240 --> 00:39:40,240 And so, again, that's part of that student buy in and having students involved, really 557 00:39:40,240 --> 00:39:43,200 involved in their own education. 558 00:39:43,200 --> 00:39:49,680 And so actually, when it comes to final grade time, I have I kind of take Myron, I think 559 00:39:49,680 --> 00:39:55,560 he'll be in the notes Myron duex version, I do conversation based grading. 560 00:39:55,560 --> 00:39:59,640 So at the very end of the class, we students and I sit down one on one and we talk about 561 00:39:59,640 --> 00:40:00,640 it. 562 00:40:00,640 --> 00:40:05,200 What have you got versus what do I think you have? 563 00:40:05,200 --> 00:40:06,200 What did you demonstrate? 564 00:40:06,200 --> 00:40:07,200 Right. 565 00:40:07,200 --> 00:40:11,800 And not a single student walks away, not knowing their final grade. 566 00:40:11,800 --> 00:40:17,160 And most of them, you know, they'll say, Yep, I wish I could have done better. 567 00:40:17,160 --> 00:40:21,760 But yeah, I think that grade is fair. 568 00:40:21,760 --> 00:40:25,880 And in in the three, four semesters that I've done this, I've only had one student tried 569 00:40:25,880 --> 00:40:29,360 to overgrade themselves. 570 00:40:29,360 --> 00:40:31,720 Most most students undergrade themselves. 571 00:40:31,720 --> 00:40:34,440 So that fear is unfounded. 572 00:40:34,440 --> 00:40:36,480 All right. 573 00:40:36,480 --> 00:40:41,320 Well, you know, this has been a great conversation. 574 00:40:41,320 --> 00:40:47,200 I actually have gotten some some new ideas to put into my next course. 575 00:40:47,200 --> 00:40:53,640 And I really want to thank Stephanie, Sean and Nick for joining me in the Poggle podcast 576 00:40:53,640 --> 00:40:56,540 talking about alternatives to traditional grading. 577 00:40:56,540 --> 00:41:03,080 And as you can tell, I think the conversation is going to continue going on about this. 578 00:41:03,080 --> 00:41:08,840 And so I really appreciate the time that you guys have spent with us today. 579 00:41:08,840 --> 00:41:13,240 Any last words from any of you? 580 00:41:13,240 --> 00:41:15,680 This is a lot of fun. 581 00:41:15,680 --> 00:41:21,360 I really think this is a cutting edge for where the transformation in teaching is going. 582 00:41:21,360 --> 00:41:28,240 Like I think, you know, student centered learning approaches like Poggle have got it right. 583 00:41:28,240 --> 00:41:30,080 I feel like that's a solved problem. 584 00:41:30,080 --> 00:41:31,080 It's still hard to do. 585 00:41:31,080 --> 00:41:35,000 But I think we as a community know what we're doing. 586 00:41:35,000 --> 00:41:39,240 But I think assessment of student learning is the new frontier and figuring out what's 587 00:41:39,240 --> 00:41:41,240 really student centered assessment. 588 00:41:41,240 --> 00:41:42,840 How do we do this effectively? 589 00:41:42,840 --> 00:41:43,840 What are the themes? 590 00:41:43,840 --> 00:41:47,760 How do we how do we understand what we're doing and how to best achieve that? 591 00:41:47,760 --> 00:41:52,880 I think that's a big new area, and I think there's going to be a lot of activity. 592 00:41:52,880 --> 00:41:58,120 A lot of folks are seeing the old ways are really stuck and are not helping our students 593 00:41:58,120 --> 00:42:00,560 get the learning outcomes that we want. 594 00:42:00,560 --> 00:42:04,800 So I think this is a big new field. 595 00:42:04,800 --> 00:42:09,400 I wanted to say, you're not going to have a perfect system your first time, but give 596 00:42:09,400 --> 00:42:13,360 yourself some grace, give yourself time to go through it. 597 00:42:13,360 --> 00:42:18,560 But also look at the resources that are out there of what systems have worked. 598 00:42:18,560 --> 00:42:23,460 And you know, there's a lot of different examples out there now and start somewhere. 599 00:42:23,460 --> 00:42:25,200 You might not have your learning objectives done. 600 00:42:25,200 --> 00:42:30,080 You might not have a very clear assessment aligned to your learning objectives, but you 601 00:42:30,080 --> 00:42:35,760 can start somewhere and then grow and and give yourself also some grace for making mistakes. 602 00:42:35,760 --> 00:42:36,760 Absolutely. 603 00:42:36,760 --> 00:42:45,120 I mean, I started doing this by talking with probably four or five different people on 604 00:42:45,120 --> 00:42:51,760 and watching talks and reading things and sort of trying to narrow it down. 605 00:42:51,760 --> 00:42:57,080 And I will tell you that I'm only doing this in one of my four courses that I teach over 606 00:42:57,080 --> 00:42:58,720 the course of an academic year. 607 00:42:58,720 --> 00:43:02,520 So I'm slowly transforming. 608 00:43:02,520 --> 00:43:08,600 I think this is a conversation that could go on for hours, days, weeks. 609 00:43:08,600 --> 00:43:11,720 I think it is a very important topic right now. 610 00:43:11,720 --> 00:43:16,840 And like Stephanie said, I think we have to give ourselves some grace in the fact that 611 00:43:16,840 --> 00:43:21,880 we may not have understood, we may not have known that there are other ways to grade students. 612 00:43:21,880 --> 00:43:26,400 And we have to kind of forgive ourselves for not for not realizing that there are better 613 00:43:26,400 --> 00:43:28,240 ways out there. 614 00:43:28,240 --> 00:43:29,540 We just didn't know it. 615 00:43:29,540 --> 00:43:30,780 But we know it now. 616 00:43:30,780 --> 00:43:32,120 And we need to shift that. 617 00:43:32,120 --> 00:43:34,240 We need to this does have to be a groundswell. 618 00:43:34,240 --> 00:43:38,080 And we do have to really think about what we're doing with students. 619 00:43:38,080 --> 00:43:39,840 If we're you know, what is our job? 620 00:43:39,840 --> 00:43:42,880 Is our job to unlock their potential or to grade them? 621 00:43:42,880 --> 00:43:43,880 Right. 622 00:43:43,880 --> 00:43:49,440 I think our job is to support all students and unlock their potential and make sure that 623 00:43:49,440 --> 00:43:52,480 they learn what we say that they're they should be learning. 624 00:43:52,480 --> 00:43:53,480 Right. 625 00:43:53,480 --> 00:43:54,480 Well done. 626 00:43:54,480 --> 00:43:59,000 Well, I want to thank you all for joining us today for the POGLE podcast. 627 00:43:59,000 --> 00:44:01,120 This has been very informative to me. 628 00:44:01,120 --> 00:44:07,560 Stay tuned, we will have more things coming up the rest of the season on the POGLE podcast. 629 00:44:07,560 --> 00:44:12,760 Well thanks to Alex and Stephanie, Sean and Nick for just a great, great conversation 630 00:44:12,760 --> 00:44:19,800 on a topic that I agree is going to be a very important topic going forward in terms of 631 00:44:19,800 --> 00:44:25,740 how we assess our students progress and our students knowledge. 632 00:44:25,740 --> 00:44:32,280 Maybe you have some innovative ways that you're using grading in your classroom. 633 00:44:32,280 --> 00:44:34,000 Let us know what those are. 634 00:44:34,000 --> 00:44:38,720 Put something in that hashtag the POGLE podcast on the Facebook page and we can continue the 635 00:44:38,720 --> 00:44:40,280 conversation. 636 00:44:40,280 --> 00:44:45,000 And by the way, we have just finished our first Zoom happy hour of the season. 637 00:44:45,000 --> 00:44:46,000 We had a great time. 638 00:44:46,000 --> 00:44:47,960 A lot of great people showed up. 639 00:44:47,960 --> 00:44:50,460 A lot of great conversation. 640 00:44:50,460 --> 00:44:54,800 We hope that if you were there, you're going to come back for for the next session. 641 00:44:54,800 --> 00:44:59,240 And if you missed it, we'd like to see you in the next session down the road. 642 00:44:59,240 --> 00:45:03,680 So for everybody at the POGLE podcast, we hope you're doing really well in your classrooms. 643 00:45:03,680 --> 00:45:06,680 We hope your students are doing really well in their classrooms. 644 00:45:06,680 --> 00:45:25,680 And we'll see you next time on the POGLE podcast.