Students have been conditioned throughout most of their educational experience to believe that achieving good grades matters more than anything else, often at the expense of actual learning. An increased sense of stress and anxiety has been shown to negatively impact students’ academic performance, where this pressure often drives students to take shortcuts in their education, through poor study habits, producing low-quality work, and inadequate preparation for skills beyond excelling at test-taking .
Grading is commonly used to provide a snapshot of student achievement on assignments, performances, and examinations, that symbolize the level of achievement of a particular task and is widely used across all levels of education to coordinate between education institutions for compatibility, and to minimize subjectivity. However, it fails to provide students with specific feedback about their learning, does not show what a student has learned, what they have not learned, nor the things they discovered on their own along the way, and it is not a reliable system to compare against other students from other institutions.
Ungrading is an educational approach that shifts focus away from traditional grading practices to emphasize learning, feedback, and student agency. With the goals of reducing grade-related stress and encourage better engagement with the course material. Examples of ungrading can include providing detailed feedback without assigning grades to individual assignments, using a pass/fail system, portfolio-based assessments, and conducting student self-evaluations. Some educators may eliminate grades on assignments while still providing a final course grade, typically determined through collaborative discussions or student self-assessment based on their work throughout the semester. Ungrading strategies can be adapted to different disciplines and class sizes, all with the goal of creating a more meaningful and effective learning experience.
With Ungrading and this project, I want to create an online resource that summarizes my findings about Ungrading and provides practical examples of applications that could work for as many different types of classrooms. All to encourage educators to learn more about Ungrading and implement it into their own practice if they think it could help their situation, even if it’s in some small capacity, if it can enrich a student’s learning experience and move education back into a learning focused environment, it would be worthwhile. This online resource will be hosted here on this website.
I have created a short questionnaire for participants to answer about their experience in education in regards to grades. I am interested in getting the perspective of both students and educators. The responses and data collected will be used to inform me as to what to populate this online resource with that would best benefit the educational community. The prompt I've provided for participants while answering the questionnaire is:
"What strategies can teachers in secondary education and higher, implement to create an environment that follows an “ungrading” learning approach, all while maintaining positive student learning attitudes, behaviors, and results?"
If you are interested in participating in the short questionnaire (~23 questions, 5 minutes), you can follow the provided link below, with an attached consent form.
Students have been conditioned throughout most of their educational experience to believe that achieving good grades matters more than anything else, often at the expense of actual learning. Across all levels of education, students have reported how grades have been a significant source of stress and anxiety (reference needed). An increased sense of stress and anxiety has been shown to negatively impact students’ academic performance (Kohn & Saffel, 2020), where this pressure often drives students to take shortcuts in their education, through poor study habits, producing low-quality work, and inadequate preparation for skills beyond excelling at test-taking (reference). Grading is commonly used to provide “a snapshot of student achievement on assignments, performances, and examinations, that symbolize the level of achievement of a particular task” (Author, 2012, para. 1) and is widely used across all levels of education to coordinate between education institutions for compatibility, and to minimize subjectivity (Kjærgaard et al., 2023). However, it fails to provide students with specific feedback about their learning, does not show what a student has learned, what they have not learned, nor the things they discovered on their own along the way, and it is not a reliable system to compare against other students from other institutions. Grades fail to inform student progress to the students themselves, their parents, and to other educators (Kohn & Saffel, 2020).
Additionally, grades often fail to consistently reflect a student’s actual understanding and learning of the course and material. Variations in how educators evaluate can further increase this inconsistency. For example, some educators may:
• Grade homework based on completion rather than quality.
• Drop the lowest test or quiz scores, while others do not.
• Weigh attendance differently, raising questions about how holidays, illnesses, or family responsibilities should be considered in attendance.
• Offer extra credit opportunities, which may only benefit students who have the additional time to work on extra credit.
• Evaluate participation, which can favor extroverted students over introverts.
• Use different assessment weights or grading curves, leading to more disparities in student grade outcomes.
These inconsistencies in traditional grading practices can result in an unreliable and inconsistent representation of a student’s knowledge and learning (Kohn & Saffel, 2020). Despite this, grading remains a central component in education. Kjærgaard et al. (2023) argued that “as long as grades continue to open or close doors to higher social status and careers, they will remain a core metric that influences how young adults see themselves and others” (p. 346).If grading has such a negative effect on students and fails to provide a consistent reflection of student progress, is it time to shift the focus from grades back to the core purpose of education: learning? Ungrading is an educational approach that challenges traditional grading practices and focuses more on student learning, growth, and agency through modified forms of assessment (Kohn & Saffel, 2020). Ungrading has the potential to alleviate these challenges for both students and educators, creating lifelong learners instead of test-takers.
I have created a short questionnaire for participants to answer about their experience in education in regards to grades. I am interested in getting the perspective of both students and educators. The responses and data collected will be used to inform me as to what to populate this online resource with that would best benefit the educational community. The prompt I've provided for participants while answering the questionnaire is:
"What strategies can teachers in secondary education and higher, implement to create an environment that follows an “ungrading” learning approach, all while maintaining positive student learning attitudes, behaviors, and results?"
If you are interested in participating in the short questionnaire (~23 questions, 10 minutes), you can follow the provided link below, with an attached consent form.