41 Matching Annotations
  1. Oct 2023
    1. Morgan, Robert R. “Opinion | Hard-Pressed Teachers Don’t Have a Choice on Multiple Choice.” The New York Times, October 22, 1988, sec. Opinion. https://www.nytimes.com/1988/10/22/opinion/l-hard-pressed-teachers-don-t-have-a-choice-on-multiple-choice-563988.html.

      https://web.archive.org/web/20150525091818/https://www.nytimes.com/1988/10/22/opinion/l-hard-pressed-teachers-don-t-have-a-choice-on-multiple-choice-563988.html. Internet Archive.

      Example of a teacher pressed into multiple-choice tests for evaluation for time constraints on grading.

      He falls prey to the teacher's guilt of feeling they need to grade every single essay written. This may be possible at the higher paid levels of university teaching with incredibly low student to teacher ratios, but not at the mass production level of public education.

      While we'd like to have education match the mass production assembly lines of the industrial revolution, this is sadly nowhere near the case with current technology. Why fall prey to the logical trap?

    1. But since their adoption, the results of the huge effort and expense of public schooling have been less and less satisfactory.

      their = multiple-choice tests


      Multiple-choice tests usually test for basic facts or simple answers, and aren't well designed for testing complex chains of reasoning, particularly at the lower levels.

    2. But to the best of my knowledge the central feature of modern schooling has never been taken up: the multiple-choice test.

      Barzun places the multiple-choice test as the central feature of modern schooling. This has a bit of a hyperbolic feel, but it's certainly a modern invention which aims to evaluate a low level of learning while still making it simple for teachers to quickly grade student's work.

      Because of it's incredibly low-level function, these multiple-choice tests should be used only for the lowest level functionality as well.

    1. https://udenver.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcuceuspzkuE9VomnEaGva1HH1ra_iS4Eua?ref=jessestommel.com#/registration

      Some related ideas that are suggesting some sort of thesis for improving the idea of ungrading: - We measure the things we care about. - In Education, we care about learning and understanding, but measuring these outside of testing and evaluation is difficult at best (therefor ungrading). - No one cares about your GPA six months after you graduate. - Somehow we've tied up evaluations and grades into the toxic capitalism and competition within US culture. Some of this is tied into educational movements related to Frederick Winslow Taylor and Harvards Eliot. - Hierarchies instituted by the Great Chain of Being have confounded our educational process.

  2. Sep 2023
  3. Aug 2023
  4. Mar 2023
    1. 9.  Grades spoil students’ relationships with each other.
    2. 8. Grades spoil teachers’ relationships with students.
    3. 7. Grades encourage cheating.
    4. 5. Grades distort the curriculum.
    5. 4. Grades aren’t valid, reliable, or objective
    6. 3.  Grades tend to reduce the quality of students’ thinking.
    7. 2.  Grades tend to reduce students’ preference for challenging tasks.
    8. 1.  Grades tend to reduce students’ interest in the learning itself.
    9. A classic

    1. Authenticity Use Wonder Curiosity Responsibility Enjoyment Autonomy Respect.

      Anagram: A War Cure Authenticity Wonder Autonomy Respect Curiosity Use Responsibility Enjoyment

    1. November 7, 2013 Stressing for Straight A’s Can we imagine education without grades? Eryn Fitzgerald Alex Enkerli La Petite Cuillère
  5. Feb 2023
  6. Nov 2022
    1. Measurement requires stopping the action, getting outside of it and holding it up against a yardstick, exactly the opposite of the activity that would create products or ship them, make customers happy or move our business forward in any way.
  7. Apr 2022
    1. Grading the study group project would not only undermine the values and motivational aspects of the course design but based on the data gathered in MDE 601 would not have a positive impact in terms of participation by learners or the quality of the work presented by the groups.

  8. Jan 2022
    1. there are thousands of pieces that I miss

      All performances are complex, and when coaching, it is impossible to attend to every minute detail. Formative assessment - active coaching - is individualized feedback to improve overall performance. Evaluating that performance, is to focus on the performance as a whole.

    2. “performance'' because I teach physical education

      I think a performance focus in important in a lot of fields because, ultimately, education is about what folks are able to do. Knowledge of things is not useful until it is applied to some problem or task. A performance focus could improve assessment across the board and shift teachers away from merely testing "content".

    3. address both the process of learning as well as the performance or outcome

      Assessment of process is commonly formative; while assessment of performance outcome is often summative, though formative assessments do look at performance outcomes too - from the perspective of informing improvement.

    4. what useful things I could say about assessment that wouldn’t expose me as a fraud

      Imposter syndrom is common as people move into more specialized fields. It's common to hear about it from PhD candidates and from PhDs.

  9. Dec 2021
    1. Self-assessment I've already talked at length about how I use self-assessment. What I'll add is that this work is both part of my approach to the problem of grades and also an end goal in and of itself. Ann Berthoff writes in “Dialectical Notebooks and the Audit of Meaning,” “Learning to look carefully, to see what you're looking at, is perenially acclaimed as the essential skill for both artist and scientist.” Metacognition is a practical skill that cuts across disciplines.
  10. Oct 2021
    1. To create a culture of vibrant intellectual discovery, getting rid of grades is necessary but far from sufficient.
  11. Jul 2021
  12. Jun 2021
    1. When We Talk about Grades, We Are Talking about People

      Would love to annotate this text with others interested in #ungrading, perhaps for a social #annotation session for the upcoming #Ungrading Edcamp in the fall!

    1. Grades are Dehumanizing; Ungrading is No Simple Solution

      Would love to annotate this text with others interested in #ungrading, perhaps for a social #annotation session for the upcoming #Ungrading Edcamp in the fall!

  13. May 2021
    1. flexible grading policies

      I'm especially attracted to the #ungrading work I've been watching from folks like Mary Klann and David Buck...and I know there are so many more people working with authentic and alternative assessment practices...

  14. Apr 2021
    1. pushback when it comes up in faculty circles

      Quite honestly, I'm getting the impression the pushback isn't as virulent as it once was.

  15. Oct 2020
    1. portfolio rubric

      Does a rubric still create the same sense of arbitrariness, though? That's been one of my main challenges of ungrading:

      • how to not shift the burden of the responsibility of judgment from me to my students?
      • how to avoid rubrics that simply re-inscribe the values I'm trying to eschew?
  16. May 2020
    1. As COVID-19 was forcing me to reinvent so many facets of my teaching and my life, I was glad of this one thing I did not have to rethink on the fly, did not have to leave up to emergency thinking. I already had a grading system meant to maximize student engagement while minimizing stress. Perhaps more importantly, partly because I had been contract grading all along, I could relate to students in a time of mutual need without that sense, so palpably present when I used to put As, Bs, and Cs on individual assignments, that my role as a gatekeeper or judge was always there in the background—a hat I couldn’t remove.

      Traditional grading, in which the gatekeeper judges the worth of student work, makes supportive, trusting relationships so much more difficult.

  17. Sep 2019
    1. You can downplay high-stakes work by: (1) allowing students to drop one or two of their worst scores on exams, assignments, or quizzes; (2) letting students replace an earlier score with a cumulative final grade; and (3) replacing some of the weight of high-stakes work with smaller, more frequent assessments.

      Or de-emphasize grading altogether. https://www.jessestommel.com/how-to-ungrade/

  18. Aug 2019
    1. individual teachers can help to rescue learning in their own classrooms with a two-pronged strategy to “neuter grades,”

      In my experience, it's often individuals teachers who're the first to challenge entrenched systems. Personally, I've found the courage to say no when I speak with other teachers at my school as well as connecting with teachers on Twitter. More strategies on ungrading in "Grades Can Hinder Learning. What Can Professors Use Instead?"