Traditional grading systems encourage students to focus on final grades, sometimes at the expense of learning. In this episode, Jessamyn Neuhaus, Ashley Cambareri, and Cole Bailey discuss challenges associated with traditional and alternative grading systems.
Jessamyn is the Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence and Professor in the School of Education at Syracuse University. She is an historian and editor of Teaching History: A Journal of Methods. Jessamyn has published extensively in scholarly publications in the areas of history, pedagogy, and cultural studies. She is a recipient of the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Teaching. Jessamyn is the author of several books, including Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to be Effective Teachers, Snafu Edu: Teaching and Learning When Things Go Wrong in the College Classroom and she is the editor of Picture a Professor: Interrupting Biases about Faculty and Increasing Student Learning. Ashley graduated in May as an honors student with a degree in Inclusive Elementary and Special Education from the School of Education at Syracuse University, and will begin her new job as a 5th-grade teacher this September. Cole is a student in the Renée Crown Honors Program at Syracuse University, studying International relations. Ashley and Cole were students in Jessamyn’s Honors class on “Problems with Grades.”
Show Notes
- Teaching History: A Journal of Methods
- Neuhaus, J. (2019). Geeky pedagogy: A guide for intellectuals, introverts, and nerds who want to be effective teachers. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press.
- Neuhaus, J. (2025). Snafu edu: Teaching and Learning when Things Go Wrong in the College Classroom (Vol. 6). University of Oklahoma Press.
- Neuhaus, J. (Ed.). (2022). Picture a professor: Interrupting biases about faculty and increasing student learning. West Virginia University Press.
- Eyler, J. R. (2024). Failing our future: How grades harm students, and what we can do about it. JHU Press.
- The Grading Conference
- POD Network
- Cole Bailey’s LinkedIn
- Ashley Cambareri’s LinkedIn
- Jessamyn Neugaus’ LinkedIn
Transcript
John: Traditional grading systems encourage students to focus on final grades, sometimes at the expense of learning. In this episode, students share their reactions to and experiences with traditional and alternative grading systems.
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John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.
Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…
John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…
Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.
[MUSIC]
Rebecca: Our guests today are Jessamyn Neuhaus, Ashley Cambareri, and Cole Bailey. Jessamyn is the Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence and Professor in the School of Education at Syracuse University. She is an historian and editor of Teaching History: A Journal of Methods. Jessamyn has published extensively in scholarly publications in the areas of history, pedagogy, and cultural studies. She is a recipient of the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Teaching. Jessamyn is the author of several books, including Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to be Effective Teachers, Snafu Edu: Teaching and Learning When Things Go Wrong in the College Classroom and she is the editor of Picture a Professor: Interrupting Biases about Faculty and Increasing Student Learning. Ashley graduated in May as an honors student with a degree in Inclusive Elementary and Special Education from the School of Education at Syracuse University, and will begin her new job as a 5th-grade teacher this September. Cole is a student in the Renée Crown Honors Program at Syracuse University, studying International relations. Ashley and Cole were students in Jessamyn’s Honors class on “Problems with Grades.”
Welcome, Ashley and Cole, and welcome back, Jessamyn.
Jessamyn: Thank you for having us
Ashley: Yeah, thank you.
Cole: Happy to be here. Thank you.
John: Thank you all for joining us. Today’s teas are:… Jessamyn. Are you drinking any tea?
Jessamyn: No, I forgot, like a noob… [LAUGHTER]
Rebecca: What?
Jessamyn: You’d think this is my first time [LAUGHTER] I know. I totally forgot.
John: One of our most frequent guests… [LAUGHTER]
Jessamyn: [LAUGHTER] Nope, nothing.
John: Okay, Ashley?
Ashley: Yes, I’m not drinking tea currently, but with it being the summer, I’ve been drinking lots of iced tea, and my mom likes to make iced tea, and so I’ll use her iced tea and add like peach juice or some mint sprigs. So I’ve been drinking a lot of tea, but not right now.
Rebecca: So fancy iced tea.
Ashley: Yes, I like to make it a little bit fancy. [LAUGHTER] Yeah.
John: And Cole, are you drinking any tea?
Cole: Currently drinking coffee.
Rebecca: There’s one in every crowd, Cole. [LAUGHTER]
John: At least one.
Rebecca: Yeah. [LAUGHTER]
John: And Rebecca?
Rebecca: I have Zen today. I have Zen. [LAUGHTER]
John: That’s not like you. [LAUGHTER]
Rebecca: That’s not like me. [LAUGHTER]
John: Today I have a Darjeeling tea.
Rebecca: See, we’re both switching it up a little, John.
John: We are.
Rebecca: We’ve invited you all here today to discuss your honors class on “Problems with Grades.” Can you tell us a little bit about this one-credit SSAMYN: Sure. There were eight students total. We met once a week. It was a one credit class. The students came from a variety of profirst-yeara range of where they were in terms of their degree completion. Cole was a first year student, and we had some all through seniors, and like Ashley, who graduated. We had a primary text. We used Joshua Eyler’s book Failing Our Future: How Grades Harm Students and What We Can Do About It.
Rebecca: We know that book. It’s a great one. [LAUGHTER]
John: And you recently all presented on this at a conference. Where was that conference?
Jessamyn: That was the Grading Conference. It happens virtually every year, and we did a student panel reflections on the course, and I thought it went really, really well. I have been really pleased to facilitate more student voices in the conversations about grading, and I’ll pass the mic to Ashley and Cole if they have anything to add about the conference.
Ashley: Yeah, sure. I really enjoyed the conference. I think it was a great opportunity to talk about the class and really get more holistic thoughts on the class and kind of get to summarize my feelings, my thoughts, and share with people who are really interested in grading and grading reform. So I really enjoyed the experience of just kind of getting to chat with a couple of my classmates and with Professor Neuhaus and share our experience.
Cole: I agree with that. I really enjoyed the conference as well because I can confidently say that Professor Neuhau’s class was one of my favorites, or probably my favorite class I took my entire freshman year. Definitely a highlight. So being able to reflect on that with my peers was definitely a good experience.
John: And we saw reference to that, and we wish we were there, but we weren’t able to attend that conference this year.
Rebecca: I’m really curious, Cole and Ashley, how did you end up in this class? Is it one that you chose or one that you were required to take?
Ashley: Yeah, I can start with that. Yeah, so as honors students, we are required to take a certain number of honors credits. Being in my senior year, I had kind of saved some of my honors credits for my last year. I had a semester at the end where I kind of had some wiggle room. Throughout my other semesters, I was an education major, so studying to be a teacher. So I had a lot of field experience and stuff like that that I needed to get into my schedule. So I had a few credits left in that last semester that I needed to take care. So I was looking for little one-credit honors classes, and “Problems with Grades” was one of them. And as an education major, it felt almost like a no brainer to take that class. So I was really excited to be able to do that. So it’s kind of voluntary, but also we’re required to take certain honors classes, but we get to pick and choose which ones we do based off what fits in our schedule, so this is one that I definitely intentionally chose based off of the subject and my interest in it and its relevance to my future.
Rebecca: How about you, Cole?
Cole: This was a chosen class, not like required. Well, yeah, the honors college requires you to take some. I was looking for a class, and I just saw the description. I thought it was really interesting. I remember I was questioning whether I should do it or not because I really had a small window of time between this class and the following, like a 10-minute window to get across campus. But I made it work, and I’m really happy I made it work because this was a great experience.
John: What were the learning outcomes for the course? What was the primary focus of the class?
Jessamyn: We had three stated learning outcomes. First, the way I phrase it is: at the end of the course, students will be able to successfully: 1. summarize the historical origin of letter grades and describe several types of alternative grading systems; 2. explain some of the specific ways that traditional grades can create obstacles to learning in school settings; and 3. articulate the meaning of grades in defining and shaping your own education, including reflecting on your experiences with collaborative grading in this seminar.
REBECC: I know we’ve talked about this on the podcast previously, but can you remind us of that recent history of the traditional grading system? And then I’m really curious to hear how students responded to learning that history.
Jessamyn: Okay, so I didn’t know there was going to be a pop quiz [LAUGHTER] here on the… [LAUGHTER]
Rebecca: Sorry.
Jessamyn: historical. [LAUGHTER] The historical origin of letter grades actually ended up being… and this was on me… it ended up being the least kind of addressed one in the class. Joshua Eyler does discuss it in his book briefly, and because it turned out the basic takeaway and the one that really benefited our discussions the most was just the understanding that it had been fairly recent and tied very closely to standardization, rating, and ranking, and that there wasn’t something kind of inherently, like I always said, they weren’t inscribed on tablets of stone and handed down by God, this is the way we should do it. There is a history of it, and for me, it really struck me that it was like teaching history of popular culture in that something that all of us had taken for granted, all of us had experienced in one way or another, but had never really critically examined kind of the roots and causes of it. But I’ll pass the mic to Ashley and Cole and see what their perspectives are.
Ashley: Yeah, I think the thing that stood out to me the most while we were reading Joshua Eyler’s book was learning a little bit more about that history and learning that the history really came from a system that was originally used to rank students and figure out kind of where they were against each other. So rather than seeing, okay, how effectively are they learning the outcomes? How effectively are they accomplishing what we need them to accomplish? Or how on target are they with where they should be at this grade level? It was really to see like who’s number one and who’s at the bottom, type of thing. So I think it was fascinating to me to see that we’ve used this system that was used to rank students as the same system we’re using to determine how well students are learning the content. I think it’s interesting to really see that we’re kind of misusing it a little bit to figure out, like, okay, how well is the student learning the content? That’s not what it was originally about. So I think looking at the alternative grading systems, it really showed me how much our original system wasn’t made to actually understand where students are at academically.
Cole: Yeah, just like Ashley said, just through the book, I definitely learned a lot about alternative forms of grading. Well, I mean that’s what it was mainly about, but the whole concept how the current education system kind of pits students against one another, really just makes you wonder: like, is it truly for the student, or is it like for the number? And because of that, I definitely did enjoy this book, but I also enjoyed the discussions we had about it.
Jessamyn: What Cole just said was definitely something that came up repeatedly when we were discussing grading, and when students were discussing their own experiences with grading, and was something I hadn’t really expected, but was how frequently they talked about just like Cole said, for being pitted against each other and in competition when we know just as human beings, how much more we can learn when we feel safe and supported in the learning environment. So that was definitely an unexpected thing that I heard from students. Another unexpected and really heartening thing that I heard from students as they reflected on their experiences with grading, is that the potential harms of traditional grading really and truly can be mitigated, if not eliminated, at least reduced, by good course design and effective teaching practices. And conversely, the harms of traditional grading can be really exacerbated by poor course design, lack of communication, lack of trust with faculty members. The takeaway I really got about students’ grading experiences was that they can be very harmful, but that a lot of effective teaching practices really do reduce the harms that students experience.
John: You’ve mentioned a little bit about students’ reactions to the grading systems as being overly competitive. Could you tell us a little bit about how students reported their past experience with grading systems leading up to this course? Had they experienced alternative grading systems prior to this?
Jessamyn: So let me just frame it. These are very high-achieving honors students, so as a group, they had enjoyed a lot of success in academic settings, including earning very high grades. But they were readily able to identify ways that traditional grading had caused them and their peers and their friends a lot of stress, especially in terms of mental health and self-esteem, and created obstacles to a sense of classroom community and obstacles to their own learning. One thing I didn’t expect was how quickly students could identify how early grades start to have an impact on their experiences in school. Correct me if I’m wrong, Cole and Ashley, but I think everybody talked about becoming aware of grades very early in elementary school.
Ashley: Yeah, I think that’s definitely something that I spoke about a lot in the class. I talked a lot about my experiences in later elementary school. It really, for me, started in around fifth grade, I think. That was when I didn’t make the cutoff for advanced math, and I was really upset about it. And I saw a lot of my friends were in advanced math, and I was put in regular math, and I was constantly getting really good grades in regular math, and like really hoping that I would be in advanced math. And of course, now a little bit of a more grown age, I understand that I put a pressure on me that I didn’t need to have there, and really, as I grew into high school, I kind of realized that as long as I was learning and learning in a way that was efficient for me, I didn’t need to be stressing myself out over these extremely high-level courses. And I think with that was the stress of grades and making sure that I was getting grade in the ’90s and seeing that if I got a grade in the ’80s on my science test in sixth grade, I came home crying. Those are things that my mom would really try to say. Like, this is not about you. It might just be that your teacher needs to reframe the way that she’s teaching, or that there’s just maybe one concept that you’re having a little bit of a difficult time understanding. It’s not a reflection of who you are as a learner, or putting that pressure on myself, and then also in middle school I was really struggling with the competition aspect of it, and watching my friends get grades that were higher than mine, or having teachers who kind of pitted us against each other and made us feel like we had to compete for good grades. So I think the traditional grading system definitely put that weight onto me and onto many of my peers, of: “okay, you need to make this benchmark or else you’re not a good student type of thing.” So I think we talked a lot about alternative grading that kind of takes that stress off of getting a number grade that defined exactly how well you learned, and rather having it be a more formative process, more throughout the unit or throughout whatever you’re learning about. “Okay, let’s check in at this point, or check in at this point, or let’s use these standards and see how well you’re meeting each standard and how we can further your learning and get you to the place that you need to be.” Rather than “we’re at the end of the unit, here’s your grade. This shows how well you learned it or how well you didn’t.”
Cole: I agree with that. I’m pretty sure I mentioned this in class at some point, but up until third grade, I went to a school that specialized first with students with a dyslexia and ADHD. And it was after that summer I transitioned to a regular, I guess, public school in my local area. And I remember at a very young age having to do a bunch of extra work trying to keep up with my peers, especially in high school, it was very competitive because I started taking AP classes, and you could definitely see the difference –not just in the coursework, but also with the students taking the classes. Like some students were quite braggadocious about being in a higher-level class, but overall, I do think the current grading system definitely can be toxic.
Rebecca: It’s interesting when I’m listening to both of you talk because I have a daughter who’s just leaving third grade and headed into fourth grade, and I’m hearing some of these same kinds of things like bubble up in her world too because they’re receiving graded materials back, but interestingly, the school itself uses a four-point system, like exceeds, meets, approaches kind of a model for actual course grades that are submitted on a report card. But there’s still an understanding of this desire for like 100% It’s interesting, some of the same feelings that you’re talking about her in her life too.
Ashley: Yeah, absolutely. I also just want to add onto that a little bit of the feelings of your daughter. I think I felt that a lot in school too, as I said. And now going into a teaching career, I think understanding that it’s your job to meet students where they are and find the way of learning that works best for them. Because I think with this traditional grading system, it works great for some people. Some students are able to exceed expectations consistently, but then there’s other students who it’s not that they’re not smart or not capable of learning. It’s just that they might not learn in that way, and that evaluation doesn’t reflect all the learning that they have done along the way. So I think now going into a career of teaching and understanding that it’s my job to make sure that my students don’t feel like learning isn’t for them because learning is for everybody. So it’s the weird time to be in elementary school and kind of figuring out this whole grading situation and that you’re really being evaluated so heavily.
Jessamyn: Sorry, not sorry for that, Ashley… [LAUGHTER] putting all these thoughts in your head. And everybody talked about this at one point or another, the way that they experienced traditional grading as a system where it was wrong and bad to make mistakes, and that learning, which is so contrary to what learning actually requires, which is making mistakes, and as very high achieving students at a very high-achieving institution, that was pretty mind-blowing, and they identified very readily that making mistakes should be part and parcel of how you’re assessed. But with the traditional grading system, they often felt like they couldn’t make a mistake.
John: One of the things that seemed to come up in the comments there was that the traditional grading system led to a focus on getting the highest grades without as much concern for the learning. Is that the sort of perception that was common in the class?
Jessamyn: Yeah, I think so. And interfering with learning, and also I say interfering with being able to reflect on and even enjoy learning, that that got lost pretty quickly. I remember one student, we were talking in class, all of us together when we met for our midterm grading conference. He was a junior, and he said he couldn’t remember ever having had an opportunity to reflect and articulate exactly how successful he’d been in learning and what he wanted to keep learning and how he was doing in the class. And all of us agreed it was quite bizarre that you could become a junior in college and never remember having a chance to honestly articulate “Here’s how my learning is going. Here’s things I’m interested in. Here’s where I want to do a little better.” So, interfering in that way with the process of learning.
Ashley: I think Professor Neuhaus really summed it up pretty well. I think we did a lot of talking about how our learning processes were really reflective of just focusing on the end result and a grade, and just kind of making it through a lot of the time throughout elementary school, middle school, high school, and how that was really the emphasis placed often by just the grading system and what we were learning.
Rebecca: I’m curious whether or not the conversations that you were having around grading just even changed your perception of what was happening in your classes during that semester.
Ashley: Yeah, for sure. I can speak to this a little bit. I was in a lot of classes and my education classes were often based off of projects or watching our observations of us teaching, and more grading based off of what they were seeing of our learning, rather than an exam or more traditional grades. But I did have a couple classes that semester that were graded based off of here’s what we’re learning, here’s a lecture, here’s your homework assignment, here’s your test, and yeah, I think as I’ve gotten older, I think those types of classes I have more of an awareness of what works and what doesn’t for me, and if it’s a subject that I find comes easily to me, then those classes are totally fine. I can listen to the lecture, I can do the assignments, I can take the test, and I’m fine. But if it’s a subject that I’m not as interested in and doesn’t come as easily to me, then it’s detrimental to my mental state. Like in high school, I was taking math classes that were really hard and that just didn’t work for me. I was constantly struggling, and yeah. So I think throughout my college classes, I definitely saw like, okay, am I doing this for the end result of an A, or am I doing this and actually learning the material? So our “Problems with Grades” class definitely helped me reflect and see how much did I learn in this class versus how much did I not learn and just do the assignments and accomplish those tasks to get the end result grade.
Cole: Often I would reflect on what we discussed in class, like in my following course, which was like 10 minutes after. And this was a very traditional course. It was the slideshows and lectures, and I would look around the lecture hall and twice a week, constantly, people are just always just doing anything but taking notes, or maybe just jot down like two sentences every like 10 minutes. But it really had me thinking, like, is this really the most efficient way to teach this class? And I would always circle back to that thought. But yeah, this class definitely did allow me to like broaden my skill of thinking.
Jessamyn: Cole, you also had an interesting experience. You wrote about it on LinkedIn. You had an interesting experience where, towards the end of the semester, in another class, a grade had been entered incorrectly. Do you want to tell a little bit about that?
Cole: Yeah, [LAUGHTER] very frustrating. I’ll say that. So, we had three exams over like the whole semester, and my professor put in like the questions that I entered into a calculator for the exam three, and because like the questions like reoccur on the final exam, I got those questions right. But overall, I just like bombed it. I was like, how did I get this awful of a grade? I didn’t even remotely get close to passing this. But yeah, I sent an email within the week after getting it, and then he got back to me. The professor just said it was his mistake for answering this wrong, and explained how he did it. But at the end of the day, I was happy that I actually did get like a desirable score. But it did make me wonder: how do you just end up putting in like the wrong test into your grading rubric? Was there a lack of organization there? I don’t know. I just think about that sometimes.
Jessamyn: Well, how incredibly high stakes it was. So everybody makes mistakes sometimes, including professors, including on the learning management system. But it’s when it’s so high stakes and it means so much, o ne little wrong entry has this really devastating ripple effect, and I think that story really illustrates an important takeaway that I saw a lot of the students leave the class with is that I felt like a lot of them left more empowered in their academic setting, a little more cautious about measuring their own and others’ academic success and learning solely in terms of grades, but in Cole’s case, this is the system – it’s the grades. But being a little more empowered and understanding more about where grades came from hopefully will help the students like Cole who are still in college navigate those kinds of issues around grades with a little more agency.
Rebecca: It’s interesting, right? That sometimes grades can feel like they’re done to you. In the case of like an error, it’s like a grade done to you, and then you feel helpless or powerless, and like, how did this happen? Or you feel maybe like you’re unworthy or something like that, and don’t feel empowered to ask about it or to question it. We just kind of accept it because we treat it as like an authority. So, good for you for raising the question and not just accepting it. Hopefully, we can get more students to be empowered to ask a question if it’s unclear or unaware. Because I think these mistakes do happen sometimes, and it causes a lot of anxiety and stress, but also can cause inaction if students internalize that grade.
Jessamyn: Yeah, and from the faculty side, I mean, talk about stress. We’re so stressed out at the end of the term. If you’re grading a bunch of high-stakes exams, that’s stressful, not just for students, but for you. And I told them at the beginning of the semester, this is a class I’ve been dying to teach for a long time, because for years now I’ve been frustrated at the end of the semester entering final grades, and for a wide range of reasons. Sometimes I’d enter a final grade and be like, “Wow, this just doesn’t really reflect what I think happened for good and for ill. Like, no, I know this student learned and flourished and did a lot of important things. The grade doesn’t reflect that. I know this student was coasting through or was just jumping hoops. Did they really learn? Did I change anything about anything for them going forward? So there was a lot of frustration on my part, and then that high- stakes part. When a student comes to your office, when a student tells you that a bad grade is a huge flippin’ deal, they are not exaggerating. It defines who they are as students in so many ways for themselves and for others, and that is stressful not just for students but for us.
Ashley: Yeah, I also think coming, more from the student perspective, it is really jarring to not know where you’re at academically. Like I think for Cole receiving that grade. He was like, “Wait, this doesn’t make sense. But also, maybe it’s correct,” and the possibility that “okay, wait, maybe this is right,” and like maybe accepting that you didn’t know nearly as much about the subject or nearly as much about the class as you thought you did is a very jarring concept. I think finding out at the end, like, oh, according to whatever grading system my teacher is using. I didn’t meet the standards. I didn’t meet the expectations. It does take a toll on you mentally and makes you feel like, “man, what did I do wrong?” When in reality, if you use more of a system that evaluates students throughout the process and helps students understand where they’re at each step of the way, then you won’t end up at the end feeling like, “Whoa, wait! I thought I knew a lot about this topic, and I actually apparently don’t know anything.” [LAUGHTER]
Cole: I think Ashley summed it up tremendously. For that week, I think my professor was on vacation or something following the end of term, so it took like a few days for him to get back. And I remember those few days, I just couldn’t sleep. I was terrified because it dropped my GPA more than I’d want. And I will say this wasn’t one of my easier classes. I did have to put in a lot of extra work for this course, but to see like a grade that jarring just plummeted my hopes. And I remember I was visiting my brother in Canada at the time, and he would want to go out and do stuff. And I was like, I got to get this figured out before we do anything.
John: So, in this class, you explored a variety of alternative grading systems. What were some of the other grading systems that were discussed? How did students react to them, and had they ever experienced those in earlier classes?
Jessamyn: Yeah. So, in addition to Eyler’s book, students chose two scholarly articles to read. I gave them a huge long list because there’s been a lot of work published in the field on research on grading. In those articles, we looked specifically at specifications grading, standards-based grading, and what the authors termed ungrading. And then we also read some of Eyler’s discussions about some of those systems. I think that students were very interested, surprised that these existed. Most hadn’t experienced any type of alternative grading, although a few people had a few isolated instances. I will say though that in a way that really filled their professors’ heart with pride, they brought the same critical lens to alternative grading, and some of them could get so complicated so quickly, and some of the scholarly articles about alternative grading just get so complex. So students raised, like Jesse Stommel says, ungrading is raising a critical eyebrow at traditional grading practices, and students brought that same kind of raised eyebrow to alternative grading as well.
Ashley: Yeah, I think it was definitely a lot to take in with all the new grading systems that we looked at, and it’s kind of a mind warp when you’ve been graded the same way for your entire education to understand that there are other ways. But it was also interesting to see like where in my educational past I had these little hints of alternative grading. So, like, I had, in one of my college courses, a professor who did use a more standards-based grading approach, and we would do a task, and it was more like, “How well are you hitting these specific standards and stuff like that?” But ultimately, when you’re going to and attending a university that uses a GPA scale of 4.0, etc. you do have to eventually have a grade put in. So as much as we were learning about these grading systems, we were still graded traditionally. But I think I had little peeks of standards-based grading, and just really thinking about how these alternative grading practices focus on the process of learning and not the outcome. I think that was the main difference I saw was that our traditional grading system focuses on an outcome and penalizes the process of trying and failing. So we see failing as being a bad thing. You didn’t learn what you were supposed to learn when in reality to reach the specific outcome you need to try and fail sometimes. So I think my first reaction to the alternative grading was that it allowed for and encouraged the process of trying, even if you might have ended up failing and not accomplishing the goal. When you fail, you learn. So that’s a part of the learning process, which I think alternative grading really focuses on, and shows that transparency to students of, “Hey, you’re trying here. This is what you can learn from it. This is where we might not have hit where we wanted to, but I can now see as your teacher that you need extra support here. So let’s continue in that direction.”
John: A follow up for
Ashley: As you go into teaching, are any of those grading systems something that you might build into your own practice?
Ashley: Yeah, for sure. I think looking at the curriculums that I’m going to be using, I’m just kind of starting to dip my toe in and see what I’m going to be using this coming year. But I think an important part for me is even if I’m using a traditional grading system in my classroom, or that’s what the curriculum uses, there are still ways that I think I can make it a little bit more alternative. Like I think for me, an important part of my education and being in this class, one of the things that we did in this class was collaborative grading. So we would sit down with Professor Neuhaus and we would talk through kind of where we felt like what we learned, how we met the standards, and I think that just conversation of “Hey, where are we at?” or “Where do you feel like you’re thriving? Where do you feel like you need support?” or “How do you feel like you’re meeting these” was important. And I think in my classroom, I can definitely sit down with my students, even if it’s two minutes once a week with each kid, just say, “Hey, how are we feeling about math,” or “how are we feeling about the book you’re reading,” or having that kind of approach of “let’s talk through this,” or being transparent with them, especially as fifth graders, of “Hey, this is why I’m noticing, so this is why I’m providing you with the support.” I think a lot of the time we feel the need to hide that support from students and hide the fact that maybe they’re not where they should be, but I think that’s such an important part of using alternative grading and incorporating other elements is trying to say like, “Hey, this is where we can support you and making the student a part of the process.”
Rebecca: I think what I’m hearing you say, Ashley, is one of the things that’s often missing is that constant feedback and the ability to adjust, and that’s baked into some of these alternative grading systems. But we can also have those same features in other spaces. [LAUGHTER] So I find it interesting that you’re pulling out some features or things that really speak to you. So I’m curious, especially as Jessamyn had noted that there was some eyebrow raising [LAUGHTER] towards alternatives. So I’m wondering if there’s other features of alternative grading that bubbled up as features that students really leaned into or really enjoyed, but also features that maybe were really problematic or that they were challenging. For example, the level of complexity of some of these alternative methods.
Jessamyn: Yeah, I think the sometimes convoluted mechanisms of some of the alternative grading systems. Several students did point out that their experiences in some disciplines really did require some straight-up traditional exams and traditional grades… some STEM classes, and some other classes that students felt that way about… and I guess the other thing would be that, like Ashley said, that in most institutions, at the end of the day, there is a letter grade. So, how to live in that reality and provide those opportunities for mistakes and not pitting students against each other – that was some of the big takeaways.
Cole: As far as takeaways go, I think the biggest takeaway that I have is that students comes first. I mean, at the end of the day, it’s like educating the youth, the next generation. But this course really just allowed me to see while the student may come first, how does the system push against the priority of that? So I really do think, as Ashley said, being an educator now, teachers should able to sit down with each student and figure out their individual needs and stuff like that.
Jessamyn: Yeah, when it came to the actual grading of students for this class, it was an interesting problem putting together the syllabus. Like, how are we going to actually do that? And I will say I’ve never told anybody this, but my first draft of the syllabus was so overstuffed. I was going to try a whole bunch of different alternative grading. Like this assignment, we’re going to use this kind of grading. This assignment we’re going to use that kind of grading, and I knew it was too much content, too much stuff to cover, but I was still mulling it over when I went to the POD Network annual conference in November, and I went to a session facilitated by Jessica Tinklenberg and Jeremy Schneider about what they called negotiated grading. And Jeremy Schneider talked about the way he had used it in his first- year large writing classes, and I thought that really is the way. So I threw out everything I had already done, and I redesigned it to be a collaborative grading experience for students. So the requirement was the students over the first half of the semester and then the second half of the semester compiled into a portfolio evidence of their progress towards the learning outcomes, the documents and documentation that reflected their engagement or their reflection on the course material. They also did a field report where they came into class and talked about what kinds of grading systems they were experiencing that semester, and then I met with each student individually, and we collaborated on their grade. And I just have to say here too that I would never plant a flag and say this is the only way that you can do good grading. I know our embodied positionality, personality, teaching context – all those things shape what kinds of things we can try. But for this class, it worked really well, and it was very difficult, I will say. I have used aspects of collaborative grading before, but not for a whole class, and not for a whole class that was critiquing grading. [LAUGHTER] So I gave them a list of questions. They knew ahead of time, all semester, what questions I was going to ask at the midterm and then the final. And the final question was: “Show me the evidence of the learning in your portfolio and tell me what grade you think this has earned.” And so it was like we had spent all this time critiquing the limits of grades or the problems with grades, and then we had to say, “Well, but what’s the grade?” [LAUGHTER] So it was very new and different, that aspect of it. Like I said, I had done some types of this before, but not when we’d been talking about grading. And I just have to share this story about a class about the midterm grades and it stars Cole. So this is what happened. We had a class meeting right before our midterm grade conferences, and we were viewing the questions I was going to ask. And Cole asked me to tell the class… he was like, “But how specifically are you going to determine our grade from this meeting, like, should I be extra prepared? Would that earn me a better grade?” And I said “That’s such a good question. And no, really, you and I together are going to discuss this, and together we are going to decide what your grade should be.” And Cole was like, “Well, that sounds really radical.” [LAUGHTER] “I know. Yes, it is.” He’s absolutely right. It fundamentally upends a really basic power dynamic, a basic top-down power dynamic. And Cole’s authentic honesty was a constant throughout the seminar. He said, “Well, that sounds a little bit scary,” and I was pretty sure he didn’t mean I was scary, but I said, “So what do you mean?” And he said, “Well, that means it’s my responsibility. I have to take responsibility for this.” “I know, that’s right.” It was a huge light bulb moment for everyone, including me, because Cole was really pointing out how traditional grading, even with highly, highly capable, high-achieving students, it can reinforce passivity, this lack of agency, the sense that students are given grades, and they feel that way for a good reason. When the instructor wields that ultimate power over the grade, and the grade determines so much about students’ success,that can really undermine students’ sense of their own agency in learning, their own responsibility for learning. Cole, I hope it’s okay I shared that story.
Cole: It’s more than okay, and I can assure you when I said it’s scary, I wasn’t referring to you. [LAUGHTER]
John: And there were no FERPA violations involved in any of that, so we should be okay.
Jessamyn: Oh yeah, that’s good. [LAUGHTER] No, no, no.
John: For the last three and a half years or so, we haven’t really had many podcasts that did not at least bring AI into some form of the discussion. And one of the things that when we do workshops on campus about faculty addressing AI, one of the things I often suggest is that our traditional grading systems tend to have students focus just on getting the highest grade they can, without focusing as much on learning. What do you think about the possibility that using alternative grading systems, where more of the focus is on learning and reflecting on learning, might that affect students’ willingness or inclination to use AI as a substitute for learning, just to get that highest grade, since that seems to be the focus of so much of the current structure?
Ashley: Yeah. So this question actually reminds me a little bit of… I had one thing I wanted to add to a question that Rebecca had asked, which was about if we had any like hesitations or what our critical thoughts were about alternative grading, and if there was any downsides that we had seen. And one of them actually was that if there’s not that grade that you’re trying to achieve, what’s going to motivate students? Because a lot of the time we see that the grades are the motivation. And I think in terms of looking at these alternative grading systems and trying to figure out what’s going to motivate students to do their best and to actually learn, as opposed to either learning to get that highest grade, or if we’re using alternative grading, using AI or some sort of help to just get the process done. I think it really comes back to that intrinsic motivation and fostering a love for learning and the importance of learning in your classroom. I think that’s one of the things that I’m really aiming towards for my classroom is making sure that I’m instilling that love for learning in my students and showing them how learning and knowing all this information and understanding the world from a more critical lens can help them be a better person, help them be more knowledgeable and be able to really know things and go into situations feeling equipped to handle them. So I think it’s definitely a battle, especially in colleges and high schools, to not have students be using AI to get the assignments done. But I think for me, I found that when I was really interested in what I was learning, and I had a relationship with my teacher, and I wanted to show them too that I was interested in what they were teaching, and that I wanted to hold up my end of the bargain and learn and actually understand things. That that is really helpful in terms of kind of fighting back against this use of AI to help accomplish tasks in schools.
Rebecca: Sounds like we have a bright future in education. [LAUGHTER]
Jessamyn: I know. That school is super lucky that hired you.
Ashley: Oh, thank you.
Jessamyn: I would say also there’s a bigger picture issue, and it goes to what I was saying earlier about the power dynamic. And I have found over the course of my many many years of teaching that if I can collaborate and work with students to address things going wrong and problems that arise, it is always more effective than if I just try to implement what I think should happen. And again, a lot of that I was able to develop over a long career with employment security and certain positionality privileges, but this is probably going to be out of date by the time this podcast airs in a month, [LAUGHTER] but the problem of offloading certain tasks to AI is one that I would say if I was encountering in my class, I would say, students, what can we do about this problem, and then see what we can come up with. Everything is changing so quickly in that area. There’s so much fear and uncertainty that it seems to me that really working with students is not just the best option, it’s really the only option. And in my experience, and I have taught at a variety of institutions, the students rise to the occasion. So when I’ve encountered problems like everybody’s looking at their cell phone instead of engaging in class, what can we do about this? Let’s do an anonymous survey. Let me throw out some suggestions. Let’s brainstorm together and come up with some strategies, and then revisit that halfway through the class. And I think the same thing applies to this use of AI in the assignments. Is there an assignment that I think is particularly important, and I’d be really nervous, will students use their own brains to do this? Then I’m going to have to bring them, actually, like you were saying, into the conversation and to see well, what do they think about this? How can I make it seem more relevant? What can I do in terms of maybe offering a way to practice or make mistakes, but I need their ideas and their voices in that conversation, like this one we’re having right now.
Cole: Just a comment on it. I do think AI does reflect a sort of I don’t know if failure is right word, but ideally, if you could get by without using it, that’d be more ideal. Because at the end of the day, I do think AI is like a tool, and it should like stay a tool, not like an asset for you to pass. Because as soon as you’re relying on it for every assignment, for example, I think at that point you need to reevaluate if this is the course that you should be in. I remember I would use AI to make test reviews. I would copy paste my online notes into an AI engine, and I would be like make a 20-question test where you’re using the following format, save the answers for the end. But that’s how I would exclusively use AI. Other than that, I would go out and do my own research. I would use my own intellect for my assignments. But of course, I have seen my peers use AI in different ways that they use AI. And at the end of the day, it really I think does come down to the educator to make sure that their content and their teaching style is like engaging enough that your students really do leave the classroom or leave the lecture hall with a sense of understanding. I took some higher level courses this past semester where I did leave confused and I’d have to look at the textbook for an hour or two each night, just to try to catch myself up, and it’s situations like that where I do understand why a student would resort to using AI.
Ashley: Yeah, I think it’s definitely where we live in a day and age where there’s so many people who are turning to it for even small things, and I think definitely in school settings, I see a lot of my peers turning to it and using it for whether you know it can be argued either way of if it’s an appropriate use or an inappropriate use. And AI is so new in the grand scheme of our history that we’re still in the thick of figuring out what’s appropriate. And obviously, each person has their own opinions. But kind of going off of what Professor Neuhaus was saying, I think involving students in those conversations, is also, I agree so critically important. As a student, I always really appreciated when I felt like I was being involved in the conversation. There was one time during our class where Professor Neuhaus said, “I’m actually gonna leave the room. I want you guys to talk about this without me here, and then I’m gonna come back and you tell me what you came up with, or what you like.” We really felt like we had a lot of autonomy over what was happening in the class and the questions that were asked, the things that were talked about, and I think involving students in the conversation and showing them that you really do value their input can increase that motivation that I was talking about earlier. And I think with AI having conversation of, “Hey, this is something that I’ve noticed. What do you guys think about it? How do you feel?” And rather than it being like a “gotcha, you’re not allowed to use it.” Kind of involving in the conversation of this is something that we’re all working through together, all of us as a team against the problem, rather than a teacher versus their students type of thing.
Rebecca: What I’m hearing thematically is a lot about the role emotions play in grading, but also in whether or not you might feel like you need to resort to using AI in certain contexts. And so, as I was listening to Cole and Ashley today, I’m thinking about the times when you’ve highlighted the importance of feeling a sense of belonging, or a collaborative environment, or a good relationship with a faculty member, [LAUGHTER] and that you feel like you can achieve something, or that it’s possible. Those are all things that seem like a lot of different kinds of classroom settings can cultivate those positive emotions that might lead to a more positive experience.
Ashley: Absolutely.
Rebecca: All right. So we always wrap up by asking, “What’s next?”
Jessamyn: So I am currently completing a manuscript, a book-length project on teaching and learning with the Unessay that will be published in the Oklahoma University Press series “Teaching, Engaging, and Thriving in Higher Ed, and of course, I will continue here as the Director at the Syracuse Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence, and I hope to be able to teach this class again. I won’t be able to teach it this year. I’m hoping next year.
Rebecca: Awesome.
John: And when will that book be coming out?
Jessamyn: As soon as I finish the revisions that I just got from the readers, and I kill off all my darlings.
Rebecca: oh, oh…. [LAUGHTER] How about you, Ashley?
Ashley: I’m starting my new job as a fifth- grade teacher in this coming fall. So just a few more weeks when this podcast comes out, it’ll be right around my time where I’m doing my new teacher training. So I’m very excited for the year ahead. I think it’s going to come with lots and lots of learning. I think it’ll definitely be a rigorous year, but I think it will be a lot of fun, and I’m really excited to be able to accomplish what I’ve been dreaming about for the past many years. I’ve wanted to be a teacher since I was a wee young child, so even though I’m dealing with some stress about the school year and planning and all that stuff, I’m constantly reminding myself that this is what I’ve always wanted, so I’m very excited and very grateful.
Rebecca: We wish you the best in your new adventure.
Ashley: Thank you so much.
Rebecca: How about you, Cole?
Cole: I guess begin sophomore year, [LAUGHTER] and see where that takes me.
Rebecca: It’s a good attitude.
Jessamyn: Cole, You’re doing the library advisory board next year, right? And you can follow Cole’s Adventures on LinkedIn, his professional adventures.
Rebecca: That’s great.
Ashley: I really appreciate you guys giving us the space to talk about it and asking such thoughtful questions and hearing about what we have to say about the class, especially for Cole and I. I think being a student and being involved in the conversations. Obviously, now that I’ve graduated, I guess I’m technically not a student anymore. But at heart, I still am, [LAUGHTER] and I think it was a great experience to get to talk so thoroughly about our experiences. So, thank you.
John: Thank you all for joining us. This is a really interesting topic, which I think more and more faculty are considering.
Rebecca: Yeah, and we appreciate you all.
Jessamyn: Thank you
Ashley: Thank you so much.
Jessamyn: Thanks for having us.
Cole: Thank you very much.
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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.
Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.
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