I'm doing #ungrading again.
Because I can't realistically keep a sense of the progress of each of 50+ students in my head, I give a number for each assignment:
0: Turned in nothing or a blank document.
1: Significantly incomplete.
2: Basically complete. For programming assignments, passes all unit tests.
3: Above and beyond -- perhaps tackled an optional challenge problem.
Several 0s and 1s indicate a problem to be addressed. 2 is by far the most common result. If a student wants to argue for an A, they should have a few 3s.
**The question: should I show these numbers to the students?**
Pro: It give them a sense of how they're doing, and therefore how much energy they need to allocate to this class.
Con: They will look at the number, think of it as a "grade", and pay no attention to written feedback.
Thoughts?
@chiasm Yes. Aside from any complaints about Kids These Days feeling entitled, there is a mindset that there is a standard of perfection (how many points are available) and your grade is a reflection of the degree to which you failed to attain it. The most you can hope for is to make a sufficiently small number of mistakes. This is ... not good for morale.
@peterdrake Without actually answering the question directly, I can throw in another pro and con:
Pro: Transparency with students helps illustrate what is important in their work, and how they perform against these criteria.
Con: Transparency also allows students to attempt to game the system, taking up more of your time and distorting fairness in favor of the good game players.
@peterdrake That’s essentially a rubric. Once you show that to students, they will try to align themselves with it, for better or (usually) for worse. They will then start to argue about the meaning of “several”. Use it internally to guide your conversations with your students, but don’t make it public. Once it’s out, it will get in the way of the learning process and dialog.
@peterdrake
We use a system of X/0/1 for the purpose of the gradebook, but use comments for additional detail, we do try to avoid points for the reason you mention.
X-not in/late, student did not provide notice or ask for extension/tell us when to expect it (works as a trigger similar to yours to check in on student)
0-incomple or did not meet required/critical criteria, invited to address missingness or issues to complete.
1-complete, meets criteria, comments reflect areas of strength and opportunity
Students are expected to complete all tasks, as tasks are connected to our learning goals and are essential for students' outcomes
@peterdrake @ungrading
I am also reminded that there is an interesting chapter on a coding focused class in the #Ungrading book
@peterdrake I think it would be useful for students to see the general guidelines you are using at the beginning of the semester. Ideally (and I go back and forth on this myself), students should be able to assign categories to themselves based on your feedback, so I don't know that it would be necessary to show them numbers for each assignment. However, depending on the course, there may need to be some explanation about the difference between a 1 and a 2. (e.g. writing a large amount of code that never compiled and is unlikely to ever compile does not count toward completeness)
@educoder I'm not asking about the criteria.
I'm asking whether I should tell them what number I gave them on each assignment.
@peterdrake as one of your former students, and having been through other educational systems (high school in France, MSc in a 3 university program in Switzerland), I think the idea of showing numbers will push towards the standard grading approach. I wouldn't have appreciated the way you are trying to create a memory aid for your teaching, and only looked at the fact that I was being rated numerically.
Ultimately, and this is my understanding (please correct me if I'm wrong in this assumption) for students to get an A means they grok the material, to quote R. Heinlein. There are a few ways to demonstrate the grokking, not all of which are through going above and beyond on given assignments, but maybe side projects they do outside of class where they apply that knowledge.
Another is understanding the applications of the material in a way that they can freely (though like every novice, sometimes ineptly) use the newly gained knowledge to different applications they weren't confronted in the context of learning it. Not entirely sure how that would help, unless you design a self led individual project where they have no choice but to use the content of the course?
I got through with good grades on assignments in my master's because the professors expected to see a grade with every assignment by the TA. But the TAs helped me understand the material without giving me help on the assignments, because I had projects I was working on where I wanted to use that knowledge. I asked about specific help in properly applying the knowledge to the project I was working on, which helped the TA see my motivation, and me to internalize and truly make the knowledge my own. That in turn made it faster for me to understand the material and complete my assignments. In addition to the completed assignments, the TAs also understood that I valued and internalized the material.
I'm just hoping to inspire some other ways of giving feedback, because I don't think numbers are the answer.
@undefined @goeland86 Yes -- in some sense the difference between an A and a B is the difference between grokking and merely successfully completing the tasks.
I have some other thoughts on what the final letter grades mean here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xXvmiHJB66jHNd4ZFUIw1FyP-7K8a1wr882bVuA3naM/edit?usp=sharing
