Welcome back everybody.
This is Wayne Pearson for episode seven of season three of the Poggle Podcast.
With me today is Alex Grushaw.
Alex, how are you?
Doing fine, Wayne.
I think you have something for us today that is going to be of great interest, not just
for Poggle practitioners, but for teachers everywhere.
And that is how can we adopt alternative ways of grading our students' work?
Yes, exactly.
So over the years, many of us have struggled with the typical point system of grading.
And there's been a number of things that have come out in various literature forms, either
in journals or just in books and things like that, about alternatives to the traditional
grading scheme.
With me today are three Poggle practitioners who all use some slightly different ways to
assess their students.
I have with me Sean Garrett Rowe, who's an associate professor of chemistry at the University
of Pittsburgh.
Sean is a physical chemist there, and he teaches both physical chemistry and general chemistry
using Poggle.
He's been part of the Poggle Steering Committee, and over the last couple of years, he's been
transforming how he assesses students from these high-stakes exams that we're used to
to some low-stakes proficiency-based assessments.
I also have Nick Roster, who is from Northwestern Michigan College.
He teaches anatomy and physiology there and some other biology courses.
He's also the assessment coordinator at Northwestern Michigan.
And also with me is Stephanie Erickson, who for a number of years was teaching middle
school science and has been using standards-based grading in middle school.
And she's currently working on a PhD at the University of Minnesota and is a curriculum
instructor at University of Wisconsin, River Falls.
All three of these people have been with the Poggle Project for a little while.
They used Poggle in the classroom.
But the notion of using traditional grading has left our podcast for today, and we're
going to talk about alternatives.
So I'm going to turn it over actually to Sean first.
Sean, can you tell us a little bit about what you do?
Sure.
Hi, Alex.
Nice to see you again.
Nice to chat with you, Sean.
The basic idea for what I call mastery-based grading is I got really frustrated with the
high-stakes assessments that I had used teaching general chemistry.
I didn't feel very satisfied with the questions that I was asking.
I felt like they encouraged students to have a really strong point mindset.
Can I get my points back?
Can I get another half a point for this rather than focusing on the learning?
Yeah, they were bargaining for points.
That's the usual problem.
And so I didn't find that intellectually satisfying.
And over the years, I'd heard a lot about ways in which big high-stakes exams, they
stress students out, and that's correlated with a lot of equity issues.
Folks who don't respond to high-stress environments don't do well.
And that doesn't reflect science at all.
My lab is not a high-stakes exam.
When we're doing science, we're down in the...
We try stuff.
We try work.
We try again.
So then I read some papers from the literature.
So Santiago Toledo, who's also pretty active in the POGAL projects, came up with a really
great idea, I thought, and it's got a couple of ingredients, that assessments should align
to learning objectives, that the objectives should be expressed at a couple of different
levels of sophistication, some easy questions and some hard questions.
And explicitly telling students what levels they're working at.
There's a lot more I could say about that.
Questions are graded proficient or not proficient.
So there's no partial credit.
You get the essential concept, that's a proficient response.
If you don't get it, then that's not a proficient response.
And then students get multiple chances to show their proficiency.
So they can try, get some feedback, oh, you made some progress, but you're not there yet.
Here's what you need to work on.
And then they can come back and try that assessment again.
So instead of a few really big assessments, it's lots of small assessments that they can
try basically every week in the class.
Okay.
Stephanie, I'm going to turn to you.
Can you describe a little bit about what you do or what you have been doing in your classroom?
Yeah, certainly.
I come from the middle school and high school space.
So our migrating is a little bit different than you would see in a college setting.
I came to thinking about how migrating practices, about a decade ago, when I started doing some
work around professional learning communities, that's when it was really hot in the K through
12 space.
And two of the questions that PLCs need to ask is, what do you want students to know
and be able to do, and how do you know that they've learned it?
And we couldn't answer those questions.
We couldn't, on a day-to-day basis, know exactly what our students would be able to know and
be able to do.
And my grading practices were not aligned with being able to answer those questions.
So I shifted to really have to first shift my mindset as to, as a teacher, my gradebook
needs to reflect what students know, not have they attended class, not that they show up
on time, not that they do their daily homework assignments or complete their science notebooks
to completion every day, but really focused on what do they really know, and their grades
should reflect that.
I had students whose grades were inflated because they were really good at doing homework.
I also had students whose grades were deflated because they weren't really good at those
things, but they knew the material.
So I needed to have a grade that actually reflected what they knew.
So when I shifted that mindset, it also shifted the conversations I had with students.
It wasn't as Sean was saying about, well, you only got this many points.
It was, what evidence have you provided me that you have learned this?
And I provide, in my space, multiple opportunities to show me what they know.
I will grade labs and I will grade projects that provide a creative space for them to
show me what they know about a topic.
I also still have the traditional tests with the multiple choice, the short answer, the
problem solving as part of the whole suite of assessments.
So I do have averages.
I will have a four point scale for every single assignment.
The four exceeds expectations, and that is an A. A B would be equivalent to a three where
they're proficient.
A two is you're not quite there yet.
You're partially proficient and you're at a two.
And then zeros and ones, I have a one that's a D, but I never accepted that.
If they got a one, I always pushed them and said, nope, I do this again.
So I didn't really have Ds in my class.
I had Fs for kids who just didn't do anything or didn't really show a lot of evidence.
And then I had a lot of Bs and some As and Cs.
So that scale really helped me shift their conversations, especially if they were struggling
and I say, you know what?
You're proficient right now.
You want to push yourself a little bit more?
Or right now, you're really struggling to get that partial proficiency that passes.
So what do we need to do to get you to that C level?
And every kid's conversation was different.
Right.
But I think it was, you know, I also do something similar to what you do in one of my classes.
And it seems like the conversations that you have with the students are like, like Sean
said, not necessarily about the points anymore.
It's like, how do we get over this hump on this particular topic?
And so I think that that's a really valuable shift in the conversation with students so
that you're giving them feedback on their understanding rather than, well, what do we
have to do to get you to a 75?
You know, which is, you know, it's just a very different conversation.
Nick, can you tell us a little bit about what you do in your courses along these lines?
Sure.
Thanks for having me today.
I've gone through, you know, you can think of this arc of, you know, your own character
development and I'm going through this arc and I've gone, I've shifted from a gamified
design course design to where students were really involved with, you know, getting, getting
points and figuring out how to accumulate points to get to the next level and all that
kind of stuff.
And then all of a sudden I realized, geez, just like Sean, I said, these students are
focused on just points.
They don't even, they're not even focused on learning.
So I've got to, I've got to totally change this.
So now I tell my students really on the first day of class that my class is pointless.
I don't use points.
And I'm modeling my course more on the idea of, you can call it equity grading or grading
for growth or I like to sometimes even call it humanistic grading.
We're all humans and we all make mistakes and it's really important to be able to recover
from those mistakes.
And not only that, you know, telling students that, hey, we learn from mistakes, but if
we're grading students like on their homework and they, you know, oh, they didn't get the
homework correct.
Now you're actually punishing them for trying to learn and making a mistake.
So instead of having a zero to 100 scale, kind of like Stephanie said, I use a zero
to a four and I don't tell, I tell students it's not points.
It's a four point.
So it's a grade, right?
Our final grades are, you know, you get a four point, 3.5, three point.
And so I'm telling students, I'm putting a grade on your paper.
I'm not putting points on there.
And just a short conversation with students saying, if I use a hundred point scale, right,
zero to 60 is failing.
60% of a grading scale would be failing.
And that's why I bring up the concept of actually the original F-bomb, which would be a zero
on a large assignment that wipes you out, which is pretty demotivating to students.
And grading, really you should think of grading as how do I use a grade to motivate students?
Never, never in the history of education has a threat of a zero been motivating.
It's demotivating.
So we kind of have to remove that and really rethink what we're doing with grades and how
we're doing those.
Do I have homework assignments?
Sure, I do.
But instead of giving students points on those, I give students, I use, it's called an EMRN
scale and you can Google that.
There's a rubric and it takes you about two seconds to grade a paper because you're going,
it's almost like a binomial scale.
Did they turn it in?
Did they not?
Did they do this?
Did they do that?
So it's an EMRN, which is exceeds, meets, needs revision or not accessible.
And that's usually the end is usually student didn't turn it in.
And so kind of like Stephanie had mentioned, I'm only grading what students have learned,
their academic knowledge.
So that discounts all formative assessment.
And so now I have to have conversations with students of what is summative assessment?
What is formative assessment?
And those are, you have to spend time with that, but I think it's time well spent.
And students start to understand what they're responsible for and why formative assessment
is necessary.
So I'm giving students feedback on those homeworks.
And I don't have a lot of students like, oh, I don't have to do the homework.
I'm never doing the homework.
They still do because they want to know where they are sitting by the time they get to the
summative assessment.
So it appears maybe on first blush that the summative assessment then becomes incredibly
high stakes.
You're only grading on summative assessment, but then you give students a little relief
valve and saying, look, we don't all learn at the same rate, right?
Four weeks that my first unit is four weeks is an artificial timeline.
Some of you are going to take five weeks to learn.
Some of you are going to take three.
And so if at four weeks you haven't learned it and you don't do well on the summative
test, well, that summative test just became formative for you.
You're going to work through and you're going to show me that you can learn this stuff in
five weeks maybe.
It kind of shifts, it almost shifts everything into almost like a one room schoolhouse.
You've got students at different levels.
You have to realize that there are students at different levels.
And those students can actually help one another.
The ones that know it can get done fast and maybe turn around and help the students that
are behind them in their learning curve to help them out.
So it really shifts the way I've looked at classes, the way I've looked at students.
And I've really appreciated kind of the process that I've gone through to get to the point
where I'm really focusing on what do students know?
How can they show that to me and maintain student motivation all the way throughout
the semester or throughout the course?
Yeah.
So I mean, one of the things that all three of you have mentioned here is revision of
what students are doing.
And as I mentioned, I do something similar to this non-traditional grading scheme where
I have in one course a couple of learning objectives.
Actually it's a day 10 learning objectives.
And throughout the semester, those learning objectives are touched upon.
They're not all touched upon in the first week, but throughout the semester, we're going
to hit them and they will show up on exams.
And so each exam question is labeled, well, this is learning objective seven.
And so that the students know that they need to, here are my places where, oh, I wasn't
doing very well in this learning objective in the quizzes.
So in that early formative assessment, so I really need to do better.
Or in the first exam, I didn't do well.
And we've talked about this.
So I'm going to really work hard on this particular area.
So it allows the students to target things that they don't know well more so than the
things that they do know well.
And again, it gets back to something that we were talking about.
It's like having the students know what they know and also have them recognize what they
don't know well is very important.
You know, again, all of the all of the buzzwords that we've all been using right now all sound
very much like the things that people tend to talk about anyway, being able for students
to reflect on what they're doing, be able to revise their thinking, being able to talk
with one another to share understanding.
So I want to come back to sort of a little bit about an idea.
You know, now that we've all described what we're talking about or what we each do.
And we've all sort of mentioned some of the positives.
What's it been like to try to implement this at your institution?
And I'll allow any of the three of you to jump in first.
Stephanie, you probably had more interesting conversations in a public school than those
of us who teach in higher ed have had to deal with.
But you know, maybe a blessing and a curse there.
So tell us a little bit about what the response has been like.
Yeah, the initially I was just kind of a lone eagle kind of trying it on my own, trying
to work within our current systems to go to this four point scale.
And as my administrators were watching what I was doing, they wanted to bring this schoolwide.
So we did end up making this a school policy of standards based grading.
And we worked probably close to six or seven years.
And that's now gone district wide as well.
All our high schools are now implementing standards based grading throughout.
But some of the biggest pushback we got was teachers really not liking that formative
assessments when graded.
They reported that or they were graded, but it's a very small portion of their grade ended
up being 20% of their grade.
They reported that students just didn't do their work and then just waited till the test
kind of wing it type attitude.
Right.
Yeah.
Because they also then had the retake option.
So they want to study for the test, they want to do the formatives, and then they would
go to the test, see where they got, they get to see the test, and then, oh, now I can retake.
I did not have those problems in my classroom.
And I think that's really how I framed the formatives.
Kind of like what you were saying, Alex, that it gives them information on how they're doing.
And I also responded to it.
When they didn't do well, I would have private conversations with them.
Or as a class, they didn't do well the next day.
We didn't get this.
We needed to go over.
So it became integral into what our everyday work was.
And so the kids then did their formative assessments.
The retakes, I made them work for it.
They didn't automatically just get a retake.
They had to do some work to show me that they worked on reviewing the material.
And then they were able to get the retake.
So that's kind of how I solved both of those pushbacks I was getting from my case.
Yeah.
It's interesting, you were saying, about the quizzes and students not necessarily working
hard initially because they just wanted to see how it went on the exam.
I find that that is a student who doesn't necessarily jump in and try out formative
assessment.
And like we've been talking about, you need to start to explain to students what is the
difference between formative and summative assessment.
And I've had other cases where you give out a quiz and everybody gets a two.
And it's like, this is not where we wanted to be.
So I say, it's also formative for me because it tells me where my class is at, which is
just as important as you knowing where you as an individual are at in the class.
So right.
And if I can jump in, as far as my institution, my institution really supports doing cool
things, doing new things, taking risks, not fantastic risks, but well thought out risks.
And I presented what I'm doing to our board.
And I got positive feedback and positive reception from that.
And actually, because the local news was there and they wrote a story on it.
And I've been actually getting feedback from community members that are really excited
by what I'm doing and have had feedback and conversations with those community members.
So it's been fun.
Has it all been gumdrops and rainbows?
No.
There are certainly maybe, as Stephanie mentioned, there are certain faculty members that are
like, you can't do this.
This is not going to work.
You can't do this.
We're not seeing it follow through with students.
I'm doing A&P, which is for many of our students is pre-nursing.
And so getting pushback from perhaps the nursing program, saying, well, you've got to make
sure that this happens and this happens.
And as far as students go, students, I find that not only am I an educator, but I'm also
a marketer.
And I market what I'm doing.
That means I have to tell students exactly why I'm doing what I'm doing.
And I make mention of the fact that, hey, if you can get a four point on an exam without
doing any homework, good for you.
You've learned it somehow, some way.
And just that I hate to use the word, I wasn't paternalistic in saying, you have to do all
the homework.
You figured it out.
Great.
But if you don't do well and you didn't do the homework, that's another conversation.
And those are things that students need to figure out, I think, on their own.
But I also mentioned to students that, look, yeah, you can retake the exam.
How many times do you want to take it?
Do you want to take that exam four times, five times?
And most of them know, I want to take it once and be done.
And so I'm trying to give them that opportunity.
And maybe we need to look at testing different.
And I've said, we're going to do a pretest.
If you do well on the pretest, then you don't have to take the test.
And that motivates students to do well the first time.
And I think maybe, as you mentioned, Alex, testing actually really should be informing
us as instructors of how we're doing as well.
And now my mind is expanding and blowing up because I'm thinking, I've read something
else.
Final exams should actually be two to three weeks before the end of the semester.
So you find out what you've done wrong, and you fix that in the last two to three weeks.
So sometimes we think of exams as being the end of the unit.
Actually it should be maybe the middle of the unit to figure out what students need
to work on to get to know what they need to know.
And I think this kind of grade, as soon as you start in this process, and I'm not done.
Alex, I'd love to have all of my exam questions have objective seven next to it.
They don't yet.
And that's some place I've got to go.
So this takes a long time to get there.
But I think as soon as you start the process, you realize, oh my gosh, I have been really
destroying students for no reason for so many years.
If I give this student an F, I'm affecting perhaps their long-term earning potential.
I don't want that.
I want them to be successful.
And how can I get them to be successful?
Will all students be successful?
Probably not.
But I want it to be on them, not on me.
You want to be able to help the ones who can be helped and want to be helped.
It's interesting when I said that I labeled every question by a particular learning objective
for the course.
It was a very simple thing that I did simply so that I could give them at the end of each
test, say, oh, here were the learning objectives that were covered.
And then I realized in one exam that I had only one question that covered one of the
important learning objectives.
So I was like, oh, I should really label these before I give them the exam so that I know
that I am covering that on the exam.
We've spent a bit of time on this.
And there's only one question on this in the exam.
And then I also realized that I had had questions that I would historically put on an exam that
really didn't get at something that I wanted to get at.
So yeah, absolutely.
Like you say, it really makes you think more about what you're doing.
So Sean, we haven't heard from you.
You teach at an institution where there might be a little bit of pressure on some of your
students to do well in general chemistry.
Absolutely.
And so I wonder what kind of pushback you've had there.
So most of the students who come through my class are not chemistry majors.
They're taking chemistry class because they have to.
They're really put in a position of coming to take this class.
It's a burden on them.
It is a flaming hoop that they have to jump through.
And that's where they're coming from.
And they've got very legitimate career objectives.
And I'm trying to get them to be at least a little bit interested in the chemistry and
try to get them on board to the learning process.
And moving away from a traditional grading approach has really helped me communicate
with my students so much better.
So I've loved hearing some common themes from everybody here, both Nick and Stephanie.
And I all chose and you chose a four point system for communicating with our students.
And so I've also got a four point system.
So when students come to me and they say, oh, I did really bad on the last assessment,
I can say, okay, well, what score did you get?
Oh, I got three out of four.
Okay, I've got great information all of a sudden.
Who is a student and where are they coming from?
So in my class, the questions have different levels of sophistication from the retrieval
level questions that are about the basics, the information you need, going up to the
highest level questions that are very open ended and ask students to be creative.
So if a student comes and says they got a three out of four, that means the piece they
still need to work on are the communicating their thinking, explaining a full justification,
being creative and taking an idea in a new direction.
So those are the types of things I can have those high level conversations with students.
And at the same time, if a student comes to me and says, I did really badly, I got a zero
out of four.
Boom, I know right away, this student, okay, we need to start at the beginning, we need
to start with the basic facts and ideas and formulas.
And don't worry about that other stuff yet, the really sophisticated problem solving that
can come later.
Let's focus on the basic pieces, the basic understanding, and let's focus on those two
levels to begin with.
So it's helped me communicate with my students so much more clearly.
And it's because like you're saying, everything's aligned to a learning objective, I can say,
this is the topic, let's get that learning objective out.
Let's underline all of the words in that learning objective.
Did you miss some, maybe there are just some ideas that just weren't on your radar.
So that helping me to communicate with my students has really helped them buy into the
process.
So from the students, the vast majority of the feedback that I get is really positive.
I mean, it's the thing that they kind of like best about my course, honestly, the students
will say, I feel so much less stressed.
And for me, that's a wonderful compliment all on its own, because stress is bad for
learning, is really bad for learning.
They wish all their classes had the ability to retake an assessment.
There is a small fraction of the students who complain about, who share the complaint
that they are a little frustrated by the proficient, not proficient grading.
There's no partial credit.
They'll say things like, you know, I feel like I learned so much, but I didn't get a
good grade because I didn't have any partial credit.
So they're still feeling that frustration.
But it's really quite a small fraction of students.
And by and large, students are on board and are really positive behind it.
Now how are other faculty responding?
That's an evolving story.
That's a different question.
That's a totally other question.
And I'm really trying to encourage the other chemistry faculty to try considering a grading
approach that's not the same exams that they've given for 20 years or whatever it might be.
And that's an ongoing conversation.
And I'm having to just share with folks what we're doing.
No, look, really, this works.
Allowing students to retake assessments doesn't mean that everyone gets an A and leaves the
class, nor does opening, you know, asking really challenging questions.
It also doesn't mean that everybody flunks the class.
You know, there's still a really broad range of students.
I feel like I can challenge students to really show me what they can do.
But I also have this, you know, the students who have, you know, they just want to pass
the course.
Right.
It's really clearly articulated to them.
Here's what you need to do to pass.
And here's what the expectations are.
So that that's the mix of how things have gone for me.
Yeah, it's interesting.
Because one of the things that I think, particularly when you talk to faculty who've been around
for a while and they don't necessarily want to change, one of the big keys is somebody
had said this before, shifting the mindset to what do the students know?
And, you know, for some faculty members, unfortunately, that's not, you know, that's not something
that they think about because they think they're thinking about just delivering material and
then seeing what the students can do with it.
You know, and so but I'm pretty sure that, you know, most of the people out there really
are considering what what do students know?
And you know, these different, you know, again, the alternatives to traditional grading, as
we're calling it, these standards based methods really help us as instructors know where the
students are at.
One of the other things that I will say, you know, depending on your field and what you're
what you're teaching, this may or may not be an issue.
But you know, teaching general chemistry, you have a lot of students come in who are
math phobic.
Okay.
You know, I'm sure Stephanie, you had this, you know, in the middle school a lot where
students were afraid of the math that you were asking them to do.
And so what I would do is say, for example, in a stoichiometry problem or balancing equations
or figuring out how much material was generated from a particular reaction, I actually would
separate out in grading that question.
How well did they understand the setting up of that problem and sort of moving the symbols
around against doing the math and getting the significant figures right and using all
of that stuff.
And if you separate that out, you find that students really, you know, some of them know
how to do the stoichiometry.
They just have trouble as soon as you put digits in front of them.
And so, you know, it was eye opening for a couple of my students in this one class where
they're like, huh, I get this part.
It's just, you know, figuring out what I'm supposed to do with the numbers at the end,
which is the math part.
And I separate those out in a learning objective.
And all of a sudden they realize, oh, I can do this.
It's just I need to pay more attention to my math skills.
Yeah, I get your point about math phobia.
I think in the middle school and high school, we also see that sometimes what we're asking
students to do mathematically is beyond what they've gotten to in math.
And so it's really important that we are aligning our math objectives and our math expectations
with the math teachers and making sure we're not asking them to do more than they've conceptually
gotten to in their math classes.
Another way that I get around the math phobia or maybe a disconnect in math abilities is
I think what we see more in high school and middle school is separating the objectives.
So I have an objective that is more conceptual for that unit.
And then I also have an objective that is mathematical.
So can, for example, in a physics class, can you manipulate F equals MA?
Can you read a word problem and identify the different variables and solve for an unknown?
And then a different objective that really is assessing the Newton's laws in a more conceptual
and conceptual way.
And then if they're struggling in either one of those, I know where to put my attention
in when I'm helping them.
So in my revision process, they're not retaking the whole test on, let's say, Newton's laws.
They're either focusing their attention on the math or I'm focusing their attention on
the conceptual and I'm really targeting what they need help with by separating the math
from the concepts.
So right, right, and similarly, having clearly articulated learning objectives helps make
the grading of open ended questions much more straightforward.
So I've had colleagues come up to me and say, how can you ask an open ended question?
Because they could answer in any way that they want.
And having a specific learning objective means that I'm looking for proficiency at that learning
objective.
If they've given some other answer that takes the question in some direction I didn't anticipate
that is not really addressing the learning objective, well, maybe it's a great answer,
but it's not the learning.
It's not addressing showing, demonstrating, giving me some evidence that you're proficient
at this learning objective.
And it just took all of the gamesmanship from the grading perspective, which has allowed
me to ask a whole new kind of set of questions that are just a lot more fun and interesting
and can ask students to take what they know and kind of use it in a fun way.
Where do you want to take?
If you could change the rules of quantum mechanics, how would that work out for the periodic table?
So opening up something like that is just a lot more fun and engaging for the students
who really want to try to perform at the highest levels of, you know, demonstrate really high
level critical thinking skills.
And kind of piggybacking on that a little bit, and I know I think Alex, you said you're going
to put some of the resources that we kind of use in a kind of references or works cited
kind of thing for the podcast.
Yeah, we'll have that on the show notes.
Yeah.
And so one of the other kind of pieces that I do besides, you know, trying to do this
humanistic grading, grading for growth is getting students to start assessing themselves.
And that one that takes some of the burden off yourself, right?
The students.
But if if you're learning objectives, your learning outcomes are clearly defined, which
of course I am still working on, which gets much harder than it seems.
You can I give students tracking sheets, here's the objective, where do you think you are?
Grade yourself for three, two, one.
And students have to turn those tracking sheets in when they turn in exams.
And I also ask them as they're turning in their exam or their their work, whatever, what grade
do you think you got on this?
Oh, and then and then we turn around and say, this is the grade you think you got a four
point, you got a three point.
Now we have right now there's some discord here.
How are we going to fix this?
Why do you think you so I'm having students explain themselves as well.
Again, that takes time in your class to to to train students how to self assess.
But that's a really important skill that we're going to send students out into the world
with.
And so, again, that's part of that student buy in and having students involved, really
involved in their own education.
And so actually, when it comes to final grade time, I have I kind of take Myron, I think
he'll be in the notes Myron duex version, I do conversation based grading.
So at the very end of the class, we students and I sit down one on one and we talk about
it.
What have you got versus what do I think you have?
What did you demonstrate?
Right.
And not a single student walks away, not knowing their final grade.
And most of them, you know, they'll say, Yep, I wish I could have done better.
But yeah, I think that grade is fair.
And in in the three, four semesters that I've done this, I've only had one student tried
to overgrade themselves.
Most most students undergrade themselves.
So that fear is unfounded.
All right.
Well, you know, this has been a great conversation.
I actually have gotten some some new ideas to put into my next course.
And I really want to thank Stephanie, Sean and Nick for joining me in the Poggle podcast
talking about alternatives to traditional grading.
And as you can tell, I think the conversation is going to continue going on about this.
And so I really appreciate the time that you guys have spent with us today.
Any last words from any of you?
This is a lot of fun.
I really think this is a cutting edge for where the transformation in teaching is going.
Like I think, you know, student centered learning approaches like Poggle have got it right.
I feel like that's a solved problem.
It's still hard to do.
But I think we as a community know what we're doing.
But I think assessment of student learning is the new frontier and figuring out what's
really student centered assessment.
How do we do this effectively?
What are the themes?
How do we how do we understand what we're doing and how to best achieve that?
I think that's a big new area, and I think there's going to be a lot of activity.
A lot of folks are seeing the old ways are really stuck and are not helping our students
get the learning outcomes that we want.
So I think this is a big new field.
I wanted to say, you're not going to have a perfect system your first time, but give
yourself some grace, give yourself time to go through it.
But also look at the resources that are out there of what systems have worked.
And you know, there's a lot of different examples out there now and start somewhere.
You might not have your learning objectives done.
You might not have a very clear assessment aligned to your learning objectives, but you
can start somewhere and then grow and and give yourself also some grace for making mistakes.
Absolutely.
I mean, I started doing this by talking with probably four or five different people on
and watching talks and reading things and sort of trying to narrow it down.
And I will tell you that I'm only doing this in one of my four courses that I teach over
the course of an academic year.
So I'm slowly transforming.
I think this is a conversation that could go on for hours, days, weeks.
I think it is a very important topic right now.
And like Stephanie said, I think we have to give ourselves some grace in the fact that
we may not have understood, we may not have known that there are other ways to grade students.
And we have to kind of forgive ourselves for not for not realizing that there are better
ways out there.
We just didn't know it.
But we know it now.
And we need to shift that.
We need to this does have to be a groundswell.
And we do have to really think about what we're doing with students.
If we're you know, what is our job?
Is our job to unlock their potential or to grade them?
Right.
I think our job is to support all students and unlock their potential and make sure that
they learn what we say that they're they should be learning.
Right.
Well done.
Well, I want to thank you all for joining us today for the POGLE podcast.
This has been very informative to me.
Stay tuned, we will have more things coming up the rest of the season on the POGLE podcast.
Well thanks to Alex and Stephanie, Sean and Nick for just a great, great conversation
on a topic that I agree is going to be a very important topic going forward in terms of
how we assess our students progress and our students knowledge.
Maybe you have some innovative ways that you're using grading in your classroom.
Let us know what those are.
Put something in that hashtag the POGLE podcast on the Facebook page and we can continue the
conversation.
And by the way, we have just finished our first Zoom happy hour of the season.
We had a great time.
A lot of great people showed up.
A lot of great conversation.
We hope that if you were there, you're going to come back for for the next session.
And if you missed it, we'd like to see you in the next session down the road.
So for everybody at the POGLE podcast, we hope you're doing really well in your classrooms.
We hope your students are doing really well in their classrooms.
And we'll see you next time on the POGLE podcast.