Going Gradeless with Dr. Mindi Rhoades
The students giggled when they heard. No grades? Really? No grades, assured Dr. Mindi Rhoades, Associate Professor of Teaching and Learning. Freed from grades, students asked to do more. They tried stuff out. Goofy things. Or, more accurately, what at first appeared to be goofy things but were in fact transformative. One student created a scrapbook on the crisis in Darfur. Another student wrote and illustrated a children’s book. Still another built a cardboard model of an X-wing.
Dr. Mindi Rhoades’ thinking on grades has evolved over her career. When she taught high school, Rhoades often delivered feedback to students in the form of a rubric and its attending grade. She valued the way a rubric communicated explicit and visible criteria for success. The more she taught, however, the more concerned she grew with how grades impacted students. Yes, students did the work, but they shied away from intellectual and creative risks.
For Rhoades, the question became what to do about these punitive and abstract things called grades. Her answer? Get rid of them. Rhoades’ decision is supported by a compelling body of research. Grades undo the benefits of formative feedback (Butler, 1988). Grades increase anxiety and decrease motivation (Chamberlin, Yasué, & Andrea Chiang, 2018). And, according to Joshua R. Eyler (2018), the Director of Faculty Development at the University of Mississippi, grades “are antithetical to the natural processes by which human beings learn” (p. 213).
Rhoades is not a lone ungrader. Educators across the country are pushing back against grades. Jesse Stommel is a Digital Learning Fellow and Senior Lecturer of Digital Studies at University of Mary Washington. He is a vocal proponent of ungrading, the rationale for which he describes in his piece “How to Ungrade” (2018). Stommel offers several alternatives to traditional grading, including:
- grade-free zones
- self-assessment
- process letters
- minimal grading
- authentic assessment
- contract grading
- portfolios
- peer-assessment
- student-made rubrics
In Dr. Rhoades’ classes, traditional grades have been replaced with self-assessment and frequent formative feedback. Rhoades approaches feedback as an opportunity to ask questions and make both intertextual and interpersonal connections. “Feedback is my chance to put pieces together with students,” she says. “It’s the spark in education where learning occurs.”
Yet ungrading can be a fraught process, especially for students, many of whom have been socialized to equate grades with not just learning but with self-worth as well. Nervous students want to know how they should gauge their success without grades. Rhoades assures her students she will talk with them if their work shows signs of misunderstanding. Students can also revise anything. These practices, she says, help build the trust students require to try, fail, and try again.
Dr. Rhoades has some advice for others thinking about going gradeless. “Be explicit with students about the approach and why you’re doing it. Students will step up in surprising ways, but you need to help them get past their moments of doubt.” And, she says, remember: “The most exciting part of teaching is talking to people about ideas.”
References
Butler, R. (1988). Enhancing and undermining intrinsic motivation: The effects of task involving and ego-involving evaluation on interest and performance. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 58, 1–14.
Chamberlin, K., Yasué, M., & Andrea Chiang, I.-C. (2018). The impact of grades on student motivation. Active Learning in Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1177/1469787418819728
Eyler, J.R. (2018). How humans learn: The science and stories behind effective college teaching. Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University Press.
Stommel, J. (2018, March 11). How to ungrade. Retrieved from https://www.jessestommel.com/how-to-ungrade