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83: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning w/ Dr. Susan Blum
16 Plays4 years ago
Transcripts can be found via our website, humanrestorationproject.org.
Today we are joined by Dr. Susan Blum, Dr. Blum is a professor of anthropology at the University of Notre Dame, and the author of many works and articles, including her recently released: Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead), which features fifteen different educators, such as Arthur Chiaravalli, Jesse Stommel, Aflie Kohn, and Laura Gibbs, speaking on their ideas and implementation of the practice. And as an interesting side note, more than half of the educators in the book have appeared on our podcast!
In this conversation we'll be talking about ungrading, framed on the ideas found in the book - the “how” of the practice, and particularly how ungrading fits within COVID-19 and promoting equity as a whole.
GUESTS
Dr. Susan Blum, professor of anthropology at the University of Notre Dame and active author, with a recent focus on ungrading.
RESOURCES
- Ungrading Book Club (assembled by David Buck)
- West Virginia University Press: Ungrading, edited by Dr. Susan Blum
- Human Restoration Project Ungrading Handbook
- Human Restoration Project Ungrading Course
FURTHER LISTENING
- 78: A Way to Ungrade, Floop w/ Christine Witcher
- 74: The Research on Assessment w/ Dr. Astrid Poorthuis
- 54: Making the Switch to Ungrading feat. Abigail French, Dr. Susan Blum, and Dr. Laura Gibbs
- 47: Redefining Assessment by Implementing Gradeless Learning feat. Jeffery Frieden, Aaron Blackwelder, & Nick Covington
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction of Podcast and Guest
00:00:10
Speaker
Hello everyone.
00:00:12
Speaker
Welcome to the Human Restoration Project podcast.
00:00:15
Speaker
My name is Chris McNutt and I'm a digital design educator and I'm joined today by Dr. Susan Bloom.
00:00:20
Speaker
Before we get started, I wanted to highlight three of HRP supporters, Simeon Frang, Aaron Dao and Casey Nedry.
00:00:26
Speaker
You can learn more about Human Restoration Project and support us on our website, humanrestorationproject.org.
00:00:31
Speaker
Today we are joined by Dr. Susan Bloom.
00:00:33
Speaker
Dr. Bloom is a professor of anthropology at the University of Notre Dame.
Discussion on 'Ungrading' and its Context
00:00:37
Speaker
and an author of many works and articles, including her recently released Ungrading, Why Rating Students Undermines Learning and What to Do Instead, which features 15 different educators, such as Art of Jarevalli, Jesse Stommel, Alphie Cohn, Laura Gibbs, speaking on their ideas and implementation of the practice.
00:00:53
Speaker
Welcome to the podcast, Susan.
00:00:55
Speaker
Thank you so much.
00:00:56
Speaker
It's great to be here.
00:00:57
Speaker
And I just have to also put in a plug for the name of your podcast, which I think is so essential, Restoration and Human Restoration.
00:01:06
Speaker
So just giving you a little props there.
00:01:10
Speaker
For sure, for sure.
00:01:11
Speaker
And what a better time to talk about human restoration in a time where we have a chance to reinvent the system and it's needed more than ever during COVID-19.
00:01:21
Speaker
And I think an interesting side note is to a quick plug for myself.
00:01:25
Speaker
More than half the educators in this book have been on our podcast.
00:01:28
Speaker
Seriously, like seven of these people have been on the Human Restoration Project podcast.
00:01:32
Speaker
So you can go back and listen to that and learn more about upgrading.
00:01:35
Speaker
Anyways, today we're going to talk more about upgrading.
00:01:38
Speaker
We're going to talk about the ideas in the book, the how of the practice and particularly focus on how upgrading fits within COVID-19 and just promoting equity as a whole, the social justice nature of upgrading within the
Ending Grades: A New Student-Teacher Dynamic
00:01:50
Speaker
classroom.
00:01:50
Speaker
So I want to start off with Alfie Cohn, because he starts off the book with different movements to take towards ending grades, and it's very concrete and direct.
00:01:58
Speaker
And he points out that many of us are required to turn in a final grade, but we aren't required to decide unilaterally what that grade is going to be.
00:02:05
Speaker
Like, we don't have to use grades as threats or bribes.
00:02:08
Speaker
And he describes this common theme of ungrading, which is getting rid of the control function, sort of moving that power barrier between student and teacher.
00:02:17
Speaker
Could you talk about what it means to not give a grade systemically?
00:02:20
Speaker
Like, how does that change the relationship between teachers and students?
00:02:24
Speaker
Yeah, I think, you know, one of the things people probably need to understand is that you can't have business as usual and do all the same practices you've always done.
00:02:34
Speaker
And there's just take away grades.
Systemic Change with Ungrading
00:02:36
Speaker
there's a whole intertwined universe of practices that include giving students a lot more agency, trusting students a lot more, maybe having a lot more conversations with students about why you're doing what you're doing, what their goals are, rather than imposing the teacher's goals.
00:02:57
Speaker
And as someone, I've been teaching more than 30 years, so I have a lot of entrenched practices
00:03:03
Speaker
And so giving some of those up is not always easy.
00:03:07
Speaker
It's been a journey for me that I've been on for over a decade.
00:03:12
Speaker
But when you give up the control and you stop calculating all the points and averaging everything together, it ends up feeling a lot more like a human relationship and a lot less like a factory.
Focus on Quality over Quantity in Assignments
00:03:28
Speaker
And even though we've kind of been...
00:03:32
Speaker
socialized to think that the grading system with precision is fair and objective.
00:03:39
Speaker
In fact, every dimension of conventional grading is arbitrary.
00:03:44
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And every educator has different metrics for what they're counting.
00:03:49
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I gave a workshop a couple days ago, and I asked people, do you count participation in your grade?
00:03:55
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And
00:03:56
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Some said yes, some said no.
00:03:58
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How much do you count it?
00:03:59
Speaker
5%, 10%, 20%?
00:04:00
Speaker
It depends.
00:04:02
Speaker
Do you count absences?
00:04:05
Speaker
Yes, no, maybe sometimes.
00:04:07
Speaker
How many absences are students permitted?
00:04:09
Speaker
It depends.
00:04:10
Speaker
Do you count homework?
00:04:12
Speaker
It depends.
00:04:13
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Some people do, some people don't.
00:04:15
Speaker
So when we give up this idea that we're actually doing something precise,
00:04:21
Speaker
and we instead focus on the overall learning experience of actual humans in our classrooms, I think it ends up feeling so much more meaningful and humane.
00:04:34
Speaker
And it's really what we're here for, right?
00:04:36
Speaker
We're not here to be like, I don't want to say police, but because that's a whole other topic, but...
00:04:45
Speaker
But we're not here to be judges of people's perfection and compliance, or at least I don't think that's what we all started by wanting to do.
00:04:56
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And we can really focus a lot more on the
Intrinsic Motivation Over Grades
00:04:59
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learning.
00:04:59
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Yeah.
00:05:00
Speaker
And speaking of that systemic shift, too, I think that there's a point to be made about humanizing the teacher in the sense that if you're going to do ungrading well without driving yourself absolutely crazy, you
00:05:11
Speaker
you have to decrease the quantity of assignments and focus more on the quality of assignments.
00:05:15
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You have to lessen the amount because the common critique I hear about grading is, well, if I'm going to focus on feedback instead, that means I have to give feedback to every single student.
00:05:24
Speaker
I can't just go down the list and give ones and zeros, which can be a lot faster.
00:05:29
Speaker
So from a teacher standpoint, what that means is that I can focus on less things and ensure students are doing them well, as opposed to just giving this mass quantity of things that I had to go home every single night and dehumanize myself by entering in the spreadsheet.
00:05:44
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And with that too, just the concept of, well, if you focus on quality over quantity, the students' overall learning will probably be better.
00:05:52
Speaker
It'll probably be more, and I hate the word, but it's true in this context, it will be more rigorous in the sense of like learning more beneficially.
00:06:01
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's certainly a deeper, more engaged kind of learning if the students do it for reasons that have more to do with their intrinsic motivation rather than the threat of a bad grade or the promise of a good grade or, you know, I teach really, really high achieving students.
00:06:21
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So for them,
00:06:22
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They expect the reward to be the grade.
00:06:26
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But when you don't focus on the grade, then they can focus on the learning.
Democratic Classrooms Through Feedback
00:06:31
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And the response I've gotten over the years and more and more as I've sort of improved my explanations to them is that they can actually, and they often say this literally for the first time, I've been able to focus on my learning instead of the grade.
00:06:48
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And I get that in class after class after class.
00:06:52
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But I want to actually talk about the load and the work and the feedback, because that is something that a lot of people are concerned about.
00:07:00
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And we should remember that COVID is all around.
00:07:03
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And I've been teaching remotely since March.
00:07:06
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And that's hard.
00:07:09
Speaker
And a lot of people are teaching remotely.
00:07:11
Speaker
in what our university calls dual delivery systems, where some students are in the classroom and some are remote, and then there are hybrid classrooms where some students are there some days and some other days, and some people are teaching in person.
00:07:25
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So this is a moment of great turmoil.
00:07:28
Speaker
And as you noted earlier, this is a perfect moment to try new things because we're all trying new things.
00:07:34
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Anyway, but the, the, I don't actually have my students doing less.
00:07:41
Speaker
I'm just not the only one providing feedback and not everything has to be graded.
00:07:48
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Some things can be, um, used for other purposes.
COVID-19 and Rethinking Classroom Activities
00:07:53
Speaker
So if a student doesn't interview, like I was teaching a class on the anthropology of childhood and education.
00:08:01
Speaker
And so
00:08:02
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students, one of the assignments was to interview somebody who was at least a generation older than my students to see what their experience of higher education was.
00:08:14
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And I didn't have to grade this.
00:08:16
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I didn't even have to give any feedback at all.
00:08:19
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They loved it.
00:08:20
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They interviewed their parents, their grandparents, their aunts and uncles, some friend from somewhere.
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And it was so interesting.
00:08:28
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And then they brought that information back to the class and we talked about it.
00:08:32
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And
00:08:33
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So there's authentic feedback from classmates.
00:08:38
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And so the teacher doesn't have to be at the center of everything.
00:08:42
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When you realize that not everything has to be judged, some things can just be experienced, that also takes some of the fear and the burden off.
Student-Centered Learning in Content Standards
00:08:53
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Right, right.
00:08:53
Speaker
And speaking of that, too, it starts us to question some of the stuff that we might have done to fill time, like it was to hit a certain standard or we felt like it had to be done.
00:09:06
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maybe we didn't need to do to begin with when we experienced doing these things in a different way maybe students actually learned more or produced better work or better learning when we took those things away i found that in my own classroom instead of focusing on 12 things this year we're doing six but everything is slower it's more feedback driven we do like multiple peer review sessions and it's turned out way better in the long run
00:09:33
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And that builds me into a question that Gamal asked in the chat, which is, how do teachers navigate content standards, standardized achievement, and then balance that out with intrinsic student-centered learning?
00:09:45
Speaker
Because it seems like those are in opposition to each other sometimes.
00:09:48
Speaker
And I know that's really an issue for classes that have standardized curricula or that are part of a sequence where the students you...
Flexible Learning Approaches in STEM
00:09:58
Speaker
certify have to go on to the next level or something like that.
00:10:02
Speaker
But I, I agree with you about deep learning being more meaningful and lasting than shallow learning.
00:10:11
Speaker
And, you know, in high school, sometimes people contrast AP tests with IB tests.
00:10:17
Speaker
I don't know if your listeners know what that is, but advanced placement tests are often very, very, um,
00:10:24
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Capacious.
00:10:25
Speaker
You know, they test all kinds of things and everybody knows a little bit about a lot.
00:10:30
Speaker
And the International Baccalaureate is designed maybe to go deeper about fewer things.
00:10:35
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And if you believe, as I do, that you can sort of get to your goals in lots of different ways, that there's not just one way to learn something,
00:10:45
Speaker
but that, and that the world is interconnected, then you can learn about virology by talking about SARS, or you can learn about virology by learning about COVID,
00:10:58
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or you can learn about virology by learning sort of basic terms and then basic rules.
00:11:04
Speaker
So there are lots of ways to get at the same goals, even the same content.
00:11:10
Speaker
And medical schools have changed the way they do things, as I understand it.
00:11:15
Speaker
They've gone to a more systems-based rather than a kind of disciplinary-based approach, or some of them have.
Effective Learning Retention Strategies
00:11:23
Speaker
So even in fields like the STEM fields where this question comes up a lot, I think there are lots of brilliant experiments with people, you know,
00:11:34
Speaker
in physics or chemistry or math, you take certain kinds of meaningful, deep, sort of, I don't know, rich problems, and then you develop the tools as you need them.
00:11:47
Speaker
And so you'll still develop them.
00:11:49
Speaker
It'll just be in a more meaningful way.
00:11:51
Speaker
But that means rethinking things.
00:11:53
Speaker
It might mean you have to
00:11:56
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use authentic experiences to get there.
00:12:01
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But then once people are curious, then they're willing to learn the tools.
00:12:06
Speaker
So I think we often get things backwards.
00:12:08
Speaker
We think we have to kind of impose this really boring stuff for a really long time and eventually get to something interesting.
00:12:15
Speaker
But in fact, I think the reverse is the case.
00:12:20
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And I
00:12:21
Speaker
So I think that that's not really a contradiction, even though it feels initially like it is.
00:12:27
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like that's the case for a lot of just like progressive education in general.
00:12:32
Speaker
The ideas that we take for granted tend to be very counterintuitive to what like the mainstream view might be.
00:12:38
Speaker
And the research backs up what you're saying, too.
00:12:39
Speaker
And there's a load of research out there that shows that when you focus on students just doing things that matter to them and really diving into those things and having those experiences, and then over time you...
00:12:50
Speaker
you coach students by saying like, hey, have you thought about this?
00:12:52
Speaker
And then that's a content standard.
00:12:54
Speaker
Students will retain that information more.
00:12:56
Speaker
And even though I don't think achievement tests are necessarily a good measure of someone's understanding or their ability, they do achieve higher test scores in those studies when they focus on less.
00:13:07
Speaker
Because just because you covered it in the class doesn't mean that students are going to do that on the test.
00:13:11
Speaker
I think pretty much any teacher knows from experience.
00:13:15
Speaker
Just go into any class from the next year and talk about something that you spoke about in the class.
00:13:19
Speaker
Chances are that many of the students do have no idea what you're talking about.
00:13:23
Speaker
That was actually the moment for me where I realized that traditional education doesn't work very well because I would spend months when I used to teach history talking about the Industrial Revolution.
00:13:31
Speaker
And I would walk into another history class and the kids would go like, oh, what's that?
00:13:35
Speaker
It's like one of the most important things that we spoke about the entire year.
00:13:39
Speaker
It was so frustrating.
00:13:40
Speaker
There's like a lot of anger there.
00:13:42
Speaker
But you have to self-reflect and think about giving up that power.
00:13:46
Speaker
And perhaps what you're saying is not the most important thing to what the kids are thinking about.
00:13:51
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Exactly.
00:13:52
Speaker
And the students know it.
00:13:53
Speaker
I mean, I've been interviewing college students for years.
00:13:57
Speaker
15 years at least, and they know that they learn things for the test and then they forget it immediately.
00:14:04
Speaker
And there's almost no doubt about that.
00:14:08
Speaker
You know, the research bears it out.
00:14:10
Speaker
Teachers' experience, students' experience bears it out.
00:14:13
Speaker
You know, I've talked to people about what they learned in college and they said, well, I didn't, none of the classes taught me anything.
00:14:19
Speaker
You know, I've learned the social things and I've maybe learned to work hard.
00:14:23
Speaker
That isn't true for everybody.
00:14:25
Speaker
There are people like me who learn pretty well in a conventional way, or at least I used to, but we are the minority, I think, and we shouldn't be designing our schools for that.
00:14:36
Speaker
But yes, I think all the research shows that doing less in a meaningful way, connecting it to interests that students actually have or are allowed to have,
00:14:47
Speaker
makes all of this much more meaningful and
Grading Systems and Their Inconsistencies
00:14:51
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lasting.
00:14:51
Speaker
When you turn over that power too, it leaves space for people who learn maybe in that more traditional way to continue doing so.
00:14:58
Speaker
We're just now allowing for everyone to learn in their own experiential way that matters to them.
00:15:04
Speaker
I want to bring up that idea of surrendering power.
00:15:08
Speaker
I was really struck by Jesse Stommels in this book,
00:15:12
Speaker
And he talks about giving up responsibility.
00:15:15
Speaker
And this quote just really stood out because I feel like if you were someone who wasn't already ungrading, this might be considered pretty far-reaching.
00:15:25
Speaker
So here's the quote.
00:15:26
Speaker
He says, if I am going to give the responsibility of grading to my students, I have to let go of my attachment to the accuracy of that process.
00:15:33
Speaker
Instead, I give feedback, and the need for objectivity or accuracy gives way to a dialogue.
00:15:39
Speaker
One that is necessarily emergent and subjective.
00:15:43
Speaker
So basically, it's getting to that idea that perhaps that need for objectivity isn't there.
00:15:48
Speaker
And instead, the subjective dialogue is more important.
00:15:53
Speaker
What would it take to help teachers make that leap of basically saying my grade may be less objective than hypothetically it might have been?
00:16:02
Speaker
Right.
00:16:03
Speaker
Well, I know that.
00:16:04
Speaker
And Jesse has been one of the great proponents of ungrading for a very long time.
00:16:11
Speaker
I discovered his work after I sort of independently invented the idea of ungrading also.
00:16:18
Speaker
And then I saw that he'd been at it way longer than I had.
00:16:22
Speaker
The idea that we are objective in our grading is something that I have had also.
00:16:29
Speaker
I've given quizzes.
00:16:30
Speaker
I've added up little teeny tiny points for this and that.
00:16:35
Speaker
And you didn't do the proper format for this bibliography.
00:16:40
Speaker
And anyway, so I understand the belief in objectivity.
00:16:48
Speaker
But again, all the research shows that grades are completely inconsistent.
00:16:54
Speaker
And for 100 years, people have replicated these studies of giving a number of educators the same work and asking them to grade it.
Rethinking Objective Grading
00:17:05
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And 100 years ago, there was this incredible study that we refer to in the book.
00:17:12
Speaker
And in three different disciplines,
00:17:17
Speaker
The range of grades that these teachers gave to this body of work was extraordinary.
00:17:22
Speaker
Some thought the work was great.
00:17:24
Speaker
Some thought the work was terrible.
00:17:27
Speaker
And somebody asked one of the reviewers of the manuscript of this book, surely there's been progress on grading consistency in these hundred years.
00:17:36
Speaker
And then last year, somebody replicated this.
00:17:40
Speaker
They said, okay, here are some pieces of work of students and people volunteered to grade it.
00:17:47
Speaker
And the range was like A through F. I mean, it was amazing.
00:17:52
Speaker
Some counted format, some didn't count format.
00:17:55
Speaker
Some counted one thing, some counted another thing.
00:17:58
Speaker
It might as well be completely arbitrary.
00:18:01
Speaker
And that's between educators.
00:18:04
Speaker
But if you have a test,
00:18:07
Speaker
and you say this question counts 10% of the test, and these are the answers, you have arbitrarily decided on what you're going to count as meaningful learning.
00:18:20
Speaker
And you're going to count as which part matters more than another part.
00:18:25
Speaker
And once you realize how arbitrary all of that is, even if you get numbers out of it, it still is
00:18:32
Speaker
I think it's not that kind of thing isn't subjective, but it's arbitrary.
00:18:38
Speaker
And so the inconsistency from semester to semester, you know, one semester I might say participation is 50%.
00:18:47
Speaker
Next semester I can say participation is 10%.
00:18:50
Speaker
So it's arbitrary on my behalf also.
00:18:53
Speaker
So if I have a shy student and they never talk,
00:18:57
Speaker
and one semester participation is 50%, then that student is going to do badly.
00:19:02
Speaker
And then if I have a revelation, oh my goodness, there are introverts, and I shouldn't penalize somebody for being an introvert, so participation doesn't count, then they might not be penalized.
Student Imposed Standards and Gaming the System
00:19:15
Speaker
And so the arbitrariness, I think, recognizing the arbitrariness frees me from agonizing over the nuances of a grade.
00:19:27
Speaker
And so I think if you ask students, did you learn, you know, what are they measuring?
00:19:34
Speaker
I ask my students, what did you learn?
00:19:36
Speaker
How do you feel about your learning?
00:19:38
Speaker
What grade would you give yourself?
00:19:40
Speaker
And I obviously reserve the right to change it.
00:19:44
Speaker
And I sometimes do.
00:19:46
Speaker
This semester, I'm going to raise the grades of at least a couple people because they were
00:19:53
Speaker
imposing kind of arbitrary standards on themselves that they'd internalized from previous classes.
00:19:59
Speaker
But if some of them are talking about work, some are talking about improvement, some are talking about absences.
00:20:07
Speaker
And I didn't tell them that any of those things would be incorporated into the grade, but they're just thinking it is.
00:20:14
Speaker
So I think Jesse's quite right that
00:20:18
Speaker
If you ask students, how much did you learn?
00:20:21
Speaker
How much did you engage?
00:20:22
Speaker
How proud are you of your work or at least your improvement or your learning or where you got to?
00:20:27
Speaker
They know.
00:20:29
Speaker
I mean, there are certainly some who game the system or try to game the system.
00:20:33
Speaker
And it's, in my view, the system that needs to be changed, um,
00:20:39
Speaker
But I have stopped really losing sleep most of the time about these little nuances of grading.
00:20:46
Speaker
And the fact of the matter is, too, I think if we were going to compare this, I don't know if there's a study for this or not, but I would imagine that there are probably more people gaming the traditional system.
00:20:55
Speaker
We see left and right people.
00:20:56
Speaker
I mean, I game the traditional system all the time.
00:20:59
Speaker
Every online test I cheated on, I...
00:21:02
Speaker
I graduated, I had a 4.0, whatever.
00:21:05
Speaker
I think I turned out all right.
00:21:06
Speaker
That's just the way you play the game at school.
00:21:10
Speaker
And speaking of which, that myth of objectivity, that idea that, you know,
00:21:17
Speaker
There really isn't one standardized practice that people fall on when they're teachers.
00:21:23
Speaker
I think about, too, how that objectivity, quote unquote, relates to social justice and equity work.
00:21:30
Speaker
So we know that.
00:21:32
Speaker
across the board that students of color, students from marginalized communities tend to get lower grades when they complete the same level of work as students who are not.
00:21:43
Speaker
And we also see students who live perhaps in communities that are disadvantageous for schools.
Equity and Ungrading in Education
00:21:51
Speaker
You'll see practices that focus more on homework completion or on participation and more objectivity or subjectivity, I should say, about what they are producing.
00:22:00
Speaker
And I
00:22:01
Speaker
I personally have come to see on grading as part of a greater like liberatory pedagogy.
00:22:07
Speaker
S.J.
00:22:07
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Miller talks about this.
00:22:09
Speaker
When you lessen the relationship power dynamic between teacher and student, you then promote students to have more power over what they say and what they can do.
00:22:19
Speaker
And it also diminishes that like judgmental attitude of the teacher and allows people to flourish within their own learning.
00:22:26
Speaker
Do you want to talk briefly about how this connects with just equity as a whole?
00:22:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:31
Speaker
that's a huge topic, but absolutely.
00:22:34
Speaker
I think, you know, when you demand compliance and you demand uniformity, you're making a lot of assumptions about what the point is of the whole enterprise and what it is that you're assessing in terms of outcomes.
00:22:51
Speaker
So if
00:22:52
Speaker
Like this has been so clear during COVID.
00:22:56
Speaker
And the New York Times had an amazing story about two students from the same class.
00:23:01
Speaker
And one during COVID in March, when they sent everybody home, one went to her family's second home in Maine and had a room where she could have the good Wi-Fi.
00:23:13
Speaker
And the other one went to work in her family's food truck in Florida.
00:23:17
Speaker
And she was working full time to support the family because that was the only income.
00:23:21
Speaker
And they didn't have Wi-Fi at home and she didn't have a laptop.
00:23:25
Speaker
And so if we are going to say, okay, now you have to write a 12 page research paper and it has to have footnotes and you have to have 20 sources, who is going to produce that?
00:23:40
Speaker
Any guesses?
00:23:42
Speaker
And if
00:23:43
Speaker
But what's the point?
00:23:44
Speaker
What are we trying to do?
00:23:46
Speaker
Are we trying to just get the product to be uniform?
00:23:50
Speaker
Or are we trying to say, given what you can do in your circumstances, engage with this material to the best of your ability and think about what you've learned.
Respecting Diverse Student Backgrounds
00:24:04
Speaker
And I think we can do that in all kinds of meaningful ways.
00:24:09
Speaker
You know, there are
00:24:10
Speaker
students who come to college and some have gone to really richly resourced private schools and they've had extraordinary training in how to write and how to do math and they've had summer enrichment camps and they've
00:24:30
Speaker
traveled the world and they've been to museums and everything is going to be easier for them.
00:24:35
Speaker
They have the means to fly home or to replace their laptop if it's not working.
00:24:41
Speaker
And then there are first generation students, students of color, where they may be still, even if they have a lot of financial support from a college, they still may be responsible for people back home.
00:24:55
Speaker
So they may not have the time to devote to
00:24:59
Speaker
going to the writing center or something to get help.
00:25:03
Speaker
And they may, it's also, they bring a richness of experience that, you know, is often really beneficial in a lot of fields.
00:25:16
Speaker
I'm an anthropologist, you know, we want,
00:25:18
Speaker
diverse experience to inform our conversations.
00:25:22
Speaker
And there has to be a kind of respect and gratitude for students who are willing to engage with whatever they bring to the classroom.
00:25:31
Speaker
And we know, you know, students come with
00:25:34
Speaker
different racial backgrounds, different economic backgrounds, different languages, different immigration status, different parents' advantages and disadvantages, different abilities and disabilities, different genders and sexualities.
00:25:51
Speaker
And all of that is necessary to understand the complexity of the material that we're talking
Holistic Educational Change through Ungrading
00:25:57
Speaker
about.
00:25:57
Speaker
So if you
00:25:58
Speaker
kind of make some people feel like, okay, you're the good one and everybody else is deficient.
00:26:05
Speaker
You're really losing the point of putting a lot of people together in an interaction.
00:26:12
Speaker
And I think, you know, COVID has made all of this really, really clear, but it's clear if you open your eyes to the diversity of interactance in our
00:26:26
Speaker
educational settings, then you want to honor
00:26:29
Speaker
that diversity, not to penalize it.
00:26:32
Speaker
I'm worried that when we don't look at this from a systemic angle, because I would consider ungrading to be the first step of systemically changing how grades work, because at the end of the day, many teachers who are on grade still have to input a grade, which if it was truly systemic, we would get rid of that altogether.
00:26:47
Speaker
But we can at least take a systemic step within our classrooms to eliminate that objectivity of assigning every single person a grade.
00:26:56
Speaker
And
00:26:57
Speaker
I think those that want to maintain the status quo would focus on this issue as saying, well, let's give implicit bias training to educators.
00:27:06
Speaker
That way, when they look at student work, maybe it's anonymous.
00:27:09
Speaker
But that ignores all the things that you're talking about right now, which is it's not only academic.
00:27:15
Speaker
There's a cultural piece, a socioeconomic piece.
00:27:18
Speaker
There's so many different things that are behind what we assume is, quote unquote, quality work or quality learning or
00:27:25
Speaker
whatever it is that we want to call it.
Systemic Educational Equity Beyond Biases
00:27:29
Speaker
With that being said, when we are participating in this work, we are not just motivating students, but we're ensuring, as you just said, that everyone's voice is heard, validated, and that people continue to press on and learn more, and we have much more fulfilling, rich experiences.
00:27:45
Speaker
To me, that is the motivating factor behind doing this, is that you feel like an organizer, an activist, someone who is helping others, which is great for us as teachers.
00:27:56
Speaker
I did want to jump over quickly.
00:27:59
Speaker
So we've covered some benefits of ungrading, but Mary and Matthew brought up a really interesting point in the chat, which is concerning how do you convince others within your profession that this is actually worth doing who are very much steeped in traditional assessment?
00:28:15
Speaker
I've been doing this for a long time.
00:28:18
Speaker
It's one thing to convince admin, which in my experience has been, well, just ignore admin.
00:28:23
Speaker
You're still giving a final grade.
00:28:24
Speaker
We can have that conversation later after more teachers adapt the practice.
00:28:28
Speaker
But how do you actually start that micro revolution of other teachers coming on that practice with you?
00:28:33
Speaker
I'm not an evangelist.
00:28:36
Speaker
I'm not trying to convince anybody necessarily.
00:28:40
Speaker
I'm trying to show people that there is another way.
00:28:44
Speaker
I think in my own experience,
00:28:47
Speaker
people who are really struggling to figure out what's going wrong.
00:28:53
Speaker
Why are they unhappy?
00:28:54
Speaker
Why are their students unhappy?
00:28:55
Speaker
Why aren't, doesn't it feel like we're on this adventure of learning that we should be on?
00:29:02
Speaker
This is giving people a new way to think about it.
00:29:05
Speaker
And,
00:29:06
Speaker
So if you talk about it, people can see that, oh my goodness, what is Susan Bloom doing over there?
Experimenting with Ungrading
00:29:16
Speaker
Are those students just lazy and they're not doing anything?
00:29:19
Speaker
And I think the students can speak about their experience and I can talk to other colleagues who might be willing to try one little thing, or they might be willing to really
00:29:31
Speaker
reflect on their goals in a little bit different way.
00:29:35
Speaker
And I don't advocate that people plunge in, you know, totally ungrading for the first time before you've really thought this through.
00:29:45
Speaker
But it's got a bunch of dimensions that include giving interesting assignments, maybe having assignments that aren't graded at all, but small ones you can start with and having
00:30:01
Speaker
audience that is beyond the teacher.
00:30:03
Speaker
So de-centering the teacher's authority and focus, giving people choices, allowing them to choose among five or three, or even to generate their own topic or approach.
00:30:18
Speaker
I mean, I kind of, I went crazy this semester and I had on essays.
00:30:22
Speaker
So students could do whatever they wanted and they could do podcasts and videos and
00:30:27
Speaker
paintings and songs and essays if they wanted or interviews or but But you can do that in a confined sort of way at first and see how that goes and ask your students talk to your students the students in my experience know what's
Successful Implementation of Ungrading
00:30:45
Speaker
happening and if you actually ask them like Joy Kerr did is she in the chapter in the book, you know, what do you think about grades?
00:30:53
Speaker
What are grades for who cares about grades?
00:30:55
Speaker
Your students have thoughts about grades.
00:30:58
Speaker
And if you listen to them, if you talk to them, if you talk about the assignment, why they're doing things, you might be surprised at how easy it is to at least make small adjustments.
00:31:11
Speaker
And then once you realize that those are more meaningful, it's easier to add to it.
00:31:16
Speaker
So that's, I think, what I would say.
00:31:21
Speaker
There are whole colleges that have no grades, and they've been around for decades and decades.
00:31:26
Speaker
And Hampshire College, Evergreen State, there are lots of them.
00:31:31
Speaker
And their students learn, their students go to med school, their students publish articles, they have art exhibits.
00:31:38
Speaker
It's not that there's no learning or product to show at the end of it.
00:31:42
Speaker
It's just
00:31:43
Speaker
It takes a dialogue.
00:31:45
Speaker
And that is something that you have to be willing to undertake.
00:31:49
Speaker
Right, right.
00:31:49
Speaker
And I think that from what I've seen, the best way to convince others to adopt this practice is just to showcase what students are doing, like to make your classroom very public in the sense that maybe you have like a presentation night at the end of your semester.
00:32:05
Speaker
Maybe you upload their work online.
00:32:06
Speaker
You ask kids like, hey, do you mind if I put this on the Internet so I can show people what you're doing?
00:32:11
Speaker
And then over time you'll have
00:32:14
Speaker
the other teachers come like and say like how did you do that how did you make that project how do you structure it and instead of having a conversation about like well i did one two three and four it's about no i implemented a system into my classroom that allows me to do this kind of work because when we shame educators and say what you're doing is wrong and it's hurting others that's just going to cause someone to shut down we know that from practically anything that anyone does no one wants to feel like they're being lectured and that goes for teachers as well um and
00:32:41
Speaker
it there's a lot of social slash political things that might prevent an educator from adopting on grading so we really have to meet people where they're at a first-year teacher is not going to have the same capabilities to do this than a 10-year teacher a teacher with tenure a teacher with a union etc um so as you're saying there are shifts that we can make that are maybe slightly more minor but more radical at your institution like maybe you have three choices instead of one but they're still a grade and maybe you do like
00:33:09
Speaker
self-assessment all the way up to, I'm not going to give a grade at all, and here's some narrative feedback, and we're going to send it home as a whole team.
Interest in Ungrading Among Emerging Educators
00:33:15
Speaker
It really just depends on where you're at, but we're making small differences one step at a time.
00:33:20
Speaker
In my department, a lot of graduate students and younger faculty and postdocs are really interested in ungrading.
00:33:27
Speaker
So I don't know what's happening exactly, but there seems to be energy among emerging teachers
00:33:36
Speaker
to try this.
00:33:37
Speaker
And I think part of that may be because they themselves have been so oppressed by the ubiquity and the power of grades.
00:33:46
Speaker
And so they are actually willing to try it.
00:33:50
Speaker
And even if it's risky, and I really applaud them.
00:33:53
Speaker
I've been so
00:33:55
Speaker
awed by their courage to try it out.
00:33:58
Speaker
I bring this up, I feel like, in every other podcast nowadays, but that creative noncompliance piece is really huge.
00:34:03
Speaker
It's finding ways to say one thing but kind of do another.
00:34:07
Speaker
Because at the end of the day, if your students are producing quality learning and you can showcase that, chances are the administration, the department head, et cetera, isn't going to come in and say, like, you need to stop doing this.
00:34:19
Speaker
This is wrong.
00:34:20
Speaker
Because they're going to be focused on what the students want.
00:34:22
Speaker
I mean, these things just, they seem very logical, but when you're doing it in your class, it can be absolutely terrifying to think like, what if it doesn't work out, et cetera.
00:34:31
Speaker
But we can find ways around that.
00:34:33
Speaker
Now, with that being said, I think that right now at the time of this book's release, which is excellent, I love this book.
00:34:40
Speaker
It's super practical.
00:34:41
Speaker
It has so much stuff in it.
00:34:43
Speaker
It's very much just like, here's an idea that you can do.
00:34:46
Speaker
And there's a lot of like questions you can ask yourself, et cetera.
00:34:48
Speaker
We also are teaching during COVID-19.
00:34:50
Speaker
So it's made the classroom very difficult to be in.
00:34:55
Speaker
Many of us are entirely online or hybrid, or if we are in person, it's certainly a lot different.
00:35:00
Speaker
It's pandemic teaching.
00:35:02
Speaker
There's a ton of work.
00:35:02
Speaker
It's awkward, et cetera.
00:35:04
Speaker
So do you see a place for implementing systemic shifts, which feel like they might be a lot of work, while simultaneously balancing the workload of what's going on with COVID-19?
00:35:17
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it is a lot of work to completely redo the way you teach.
00:35:22
Speaker
And even if you're in the classroom, if students can't move around and if they're so distant, then how does small group work
COVID-19: Flexibility and Humane Education
00:35:29
Speaker
happen?
00:35:29
Speaker
You know, we've been advocating active learning for so many decades now, and now active learning is really important.
00:35:38
Speaker
COVID spreading.
00:35:39
Speaker
So we want to be really careful about that.
00:35:42
Speaker
And so you have to really rethink your goals and how to implement your goals.
00:35:46
Speaker
And every educator I know is exhausted and burned out and frazzled.
00:35:51
Speaker
And so to colleagues out there, you know, if you can't change any more than you have to, just try to get through this, this will end.
00:36:03
Speaker
But for me, ungrading has really not
00:36:07
Speaker
required as much shifting as probably other people have experienced.
00:36:13
Speaker
So things like participation or timeliness or something have been much harder for students during COVID.
00:36:23
Speaker
Our campus is almost fully in person with complete density in the dorms and everything.
00:36:31
Speaker
And we've had a lot of cases.
00:36:33
Speaker
And so a lot of the contacts have gone into isolation and quarantine.
00:36:37
Speaker
And thankfully, nobody's gotten really sick as far as we know.
00:36:41
Speaker
But if you're moving to quarantine all of a sudden for two weeks, you might be late on an assignment.
00:36:50
Speaker
And it seems to me this is a really perfect moment to let go of the timeliness dimension of your grading if that was there before.
00:37:02
Speaker
And asking people, what do you need to do to accomplish this goal?
00:37:07
Speaker
If it's three papers instead of four papers, maybe this is the time to allow that.
00:37:12
Speaker
So ungrading means you're not committed to a formula that you've established.
00:37:21
Speaker
And a lot of the LMSs, the learning management systems like Blackboard and Canvas and things,
00:37:28
Speaker
have a kind of formula built in.
00:37:31
Speaker
And I think that's probably even more the case in K through 12 schools.
00:37:35
Speaker
But if you have a kind of flexible grading system, then you can modify it even as you go, as you find out like what I thought was going to work in August in October, I see isn't working and it doesn't throw everything out of whack.
00:37:54
Speaker
Because you're still focused on the students as human beings, you're focused on their well-being, and you're focused on their learning.
00:38:02
Speaker
And if they don't do three papers, they might still be learning a lot.
00:38:07
Speaker
For sure.
00:38:08
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it builds how the conversation started, which is allowing grace by slowing down, focusing on the individuals as humans.
00:38:17
Speaker
And that goes for both students and ourselves and recognizing that if you're trying to upkeep what you were doing last year at our current point in 2020, 2021, you're going to drive yourself bonkers.
00:38:28
Speaker
Like it's going to be absolutely absurd to maintain that level of work and work life balance.
00:38:33
Speaker
And, I mean, people have been asking like, well, how do you how do you actually still produce projects when they're all this is going on and students are all over the place?
00:38:43
Speaker
Well, the answer is exactly what you're saying.
00:38:45
Speaker
It's giving students a ton of choice in what they're doing.
00:38:47
Speaker
So they want to do it.
00:38:48
Speaker
Slowing down to the point where we might have last week we had three or four just straight up, just like all we're doing all day is working.
Renewed Teaching Enthusiasm through Ungrading
00:38:56
Speaker
And.
00:38:57
Speaker
I spent all of that time giving feedback.
00:38:59
Speaker
I just kind of sat at the front of the room and said, hey, if you have any questions, let me know, but I'm just going to be giving some feedback on your stuff.
00:39:04
Speaker
And it was pretty low key.
00:39:05
Speaker
Just put some music on and it was fairly relaxing.
00:39:08
Speaker
And that doesn't mean that students are learning less.
00:39:11
Speaker
They are being given the time to process what's going on and learn things on their own and just really self-navigate the things that they care about.
00:39:19
Speaker
And that's OK.
00:39:20
Speaker
Normally, we wouldn't have that much time, but right now it's needed.
00:39:24
Speaker
We need that time to learn.
00:39:27
Speaker
Is there anything else that we didn't hit yet that you would want to throw out there when it comes to ungrading?
00:39:33
Speaker
I think I wanted actually to just add a thought to what you just said.
00:39:39
Speaker
And we've all experienced a kind of trauma and a kind of grief and losing the life we're used to.
00:39:46
Speaker
And that takes a lot of energy and everybody's a little bit confused together.
00:39:52
Speaker
So I think having music playing and giving people a less...
00:39:56
Speaker
intense moment doesn't mean they're not learning.
00:39:59
Speaker
It doesn't mean you're not being a rigorous, committed teacher.
00:40:03
Speaker
I think we all need a little bit of space like that.
00:40:10
Speaker
Ungrading is something that has really reinvigorated my own teaching.
00:40:15
Speaker
It's given me a lot more enjoyment of my own classes and my students, and it's made the conversations much more honest
00:40:24
Speaker
It's allowed students to take risks
00:40:27
Speaker
in trying something new that maybe they've always wanted to try, but they never dared before because they were going to be penalized if it wasn't good enough.
00:40:36
Speaker
It's allowed me to preach the gospel of perfection being the enemy of the good and having good enough first drafts and allowing me to implement a lot of practices that are really helpful for life beyond school.
00:40:52
Speaker
And if my students can take that with them, then...
00:40:56
Speaker
That's a wonderful thing.
00:40:58
Speaker
And I'm really happy that that's, that's been made possible by letting go of this other mechanistic approach.
00:41:07
Speaker
And
Promotion of 'Ungrading' Book and Resources
00:41:08
Speaker
Susan, I seriously appreciate you coming on and speaking about this.
00:41:10
Speaker
I'm going to do some, some promos here.
00:41:13
Speaker
First off,
00:41:14
Speaker
Ungrading the book.
00:41:15
Speaker
There it is in focus.
00:41:17
Speaker
This is available through the West Virginia University Press.
00:41:22
Speaker
You can find it right now.
00:41:23
Speaker
You can order it directly through their website.
00:41:25
Speaker
It's also available in bookstores soon or now that came out earlier on the publisher website.
00:41:30
Speaker
I'm pretty sure that if you go to also the Ungrading Book Talk, which, Susan, could you remind me who's the person who's organizing that?
00:41:37
Speaker
David Beck?
00:41:40
Speaker
I don't know him actually at all.
00:41:43
Speaker
He has, I think, 150 people signed up now to do the ungrading chat on Twitter.
00:41:48
Speaker
And it's also like a monthly like Zoom meetup book club.
00:41:51
Speaker
But on that website, which I'll link in the show notes slash chat here in a second, you can get 30% off the book.
00:41:58
Speaker
The other thing, quick promo for HRP.
00:42:00
Speaker
Again, almost half of the authors in this book are available on our podcast.
00:42:04
Speaker
Susan and I also spoke before.
00:42:05
Speaker
David Buck.
00:42:06
Speaker
Thank you.
00:42:06
Speaker
Sorry, David.
00:42:06
Speaker
I got your last question.
00:42:08
Speaker
But we have all those people on our podcast.
00:42:11
Speaker
We also have an ungrading course slash booklet that walks you through how to do this systemically.
00:42:17
Speaker
It's all free.
00:42:18
Speaker
And you can check that out on our website, which is humanrestorationproject.org.
00:42:23
Speaker
Other than that, Susan, seriously, I appreciate you coming on.
00:42:26
Speaker
I appreciate you talking about these things and putting together this work because it really is a really cool piece.
00:42:32
Speaker
Well, thanks so much for having me and stay healthy and we will get through this year.
00:42:41
Speaker
Thank you again for listening to the Human Restoration Project podcast.
00:42:44
Speaker
I hope this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to push the progressive envelope of education.
00:42:48
Speaker
You can learn more about our cause, support us, and stay tuned to this podcast and other updates on our website at humanrestorationproject.org.