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Hi there! Thank you for dropping in on my #Ungrading journey. My name is Anna and I teach biology (FT, TT) at the smallest of the California Community Colleges, Feather River College in the northern Sierra Nevada. I have just finished my 18th year here. Grad school was at UC Berkeley (Integrative Biology, Paleobotany) and towards the end of grad school I also taught intro bio for Ohlone College and College of Marin as a part-timer.

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In 2018 I attended a year-long training in active learning through NSF/CSU Chico which very much changed my teaching. It was something I always wanted to do but didn't know how or where to start. My college is tiny and I am the only FT biology faculty and our physical location is extremely rural and remote so I was missing out on getting great ideas from colleagues and there was never any money for PD either. In my early career here I was also extremely busy raising my daughter as a single mom and just keeping on top of things, so there was little time or space for a major training or major course revisions. My teaching evals were always good as well so I didn't seriously question the status quo either for a long time.

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In 2019 I was recruited by NSF for a year-long training on putting together a successful NSF S-STEM grant. As part of the training, NSF paid for me to attend the 2019 S-STEM conference where I was first introduced to some of the new and exciting research in the STEM-education field. It was there I was introduced to the Pedagogy of Kindness and Sara Goldbrick-Rab from Hope for College made a deep impression on me as well.  Through following some of the speakers on social media I came across Jesse Stommel and #Ungrading and it right away became something I was interested in.
BTW - after revising the first year submission, I was awarded an S-STEM grant just last April.

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The Pandemic - my first tiny venture into #Ungrading

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The Pandemic - my first tiny venture into #Ungrading

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As awful as the early weeks of the pandemic and the sudden switch to online were - for me it gave the courage and the push to start experimenting with #Ungrading. In March 2020 I did away with all remaining exams and switch to weekly assignments. Instead of P/NP I still used points but students could redo/resubmit any assignment after feedback from me. It wasn't well-thought out then and certainly did not include student input and was perhaps at the time more strongly influenced by kindness pedagogy but I just couldn't keep going as usual considering the awful times we were all in.

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I am not sure I totally understand the concept of asset-framing, but to me, in my course, I am increasingly making everything we do explicitly about #Learning. To me it is simple: students are in college to learn so everything we do should be about learning (vs. testing, grading, ranking etc.). So for any activity including tests, I stress learning. I tell them what I really care about is for them and me to see that they have learned something.
I am a biologist, so I often use biology to get around resistance for doing an active learning activity + #Ungrading. I preface each ungraded active learning activity with something we know about learning and/or the brain from science. For example, if we are going to do a Think-Pair-Share, I will explicitly tell them that students often learn better from peers and/or if they are teaching someone else.

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#Ungrading: grade less and eliminate (some) grades

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#Ungrading: grade less and eliminate (some) grades

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I stopped collecting and grading active learning activities (I now cannot believe I actually used to collect these worksheet and grade them). I gave students feedback during the activity and debrief but I stressed that it is their learning and that messy early learning is not for me to grade but that this is a place to make mistakes, figure out how things work and to really engage with the material. For the first few weeks, students would constantly ask me whether they had to turn in active learning worksheets or whether they should put all their names on a model they built of a biological structure. I encouraged them to have an organized binder for the open-notebook tests and I made space in the classroom to store models for future use (test, another active learning activity etc.). Students stopped asking about turning in worksheets and models, but it was clear that most students did have these in their notes and binders.

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Around #Ungrading one of the biggest changes I have made is that I have fully moved away from traditional, timed, graded, memorized tests. I have always given an extensive Take-Home final in my fall semester majors courses and that strategy had always worked pretty well, but I ‘felt’ without ever really questioning this, that I was doing the students a disservice not having timed tests without notes. This always led to frustration on my part of how little students seem to understand the material they had so dutifully memorized and frustration on the part of the student on how poorly they did on exams despite dutifully memorizing and studying. Reading about different pedagogies caused me to see this disconnect: I wanted my students to be able to explain answers clearly demonstrate their understanding of the material with their ability to apply the concepts in a novel setting or by making connections between different concepts. Yet I was expecting these beginning biology learners (to do this by what they had memorized. In science, when working on problem, scientists typically always refer to notes, literature, colleagues as well as what is in their head, but rarely entirely out of the working knowledge the scientist has in their memory. The pandemic also brought equity and social justice issues around test taking into stark contrast: unreliable internet, siblings having to share family computers, no quiet space to study at home, Covid trauma (rapidly changing circumstances, sickness including long Covid, loss of loved ones etc.). It just did not seem the right time to insist on a traditional, timed, no-notes test. For the initial shut-down, I did away with any tests and instead switched to smaller, weekly graded assignments that could be redone/resubmitted. In 2020-2021 all my tests were open notes and/or take home but in 2021-2022 I added the following #Ungrading component (grade differently): tests were in-person, open notes but I allowed students to go over the test with other students before turning the test in. For each answer there was a space where the student could put their initial answer and a space where students could make changes to their initial answer. After the test, I reviewed the test with the students and had them self-assess their answer(s). Only then did I actually grade the test which was really easy since I rarely had to add more feedback for the students. This system also gave me a lot of feedback on how students were understanding especially sticky concepts. Adding the discussion with peers also seemed to make students write more detailed, better reasoned/explained answers: I used to have a short-hand for answers that were just too brief and not well explained: GMM - Give Me More. I rarely put GMM on any test in 2021-2022; instead I was frankly amazed that I was finally getting the type of answer I have ALWAYS WANTED.

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I am going to start by stating that trying #Ungrading this past academic year was so awesome that I am never going back. I am sure I am going to tweak things but the emancipatory nature of #Ungrading is just too awesome.

I am actually in the part of the the dreaded Student Learning Outcome Assessment Cycle (SLOAC), where I have to do an official report of my assessment of student learning and most of what is on this padlet is actually in the narrative for my SLO assessment. In the past I have HATED this so much and I am starting to sort out why: in this SLOAC system I am supposed to assess how well my students are learning and that shouldn't be something I hate. yet I have hated doing this particular version with a passion. I have tried fancy rubrics, year to year statistical comparisons of how students did answering a certain question assigned to assess a specific SLO and I have hated doing so and I have not felt that analyzing this or writing about it has made any difference. I have always been mindful of my teaching and have always made changes and I could always tell you how students were doing. What I had never done though is this: I have never actually looked at the system my college/state uses for assessment and known how to question its validity, its right-ness etc. despite a noticeable sense of unease I couldn't explain. #Ungrading has not only given me the framework to name my uneasiness but also a tool to recognize the deep flaws of the system and a tool to challenge and mitigate those flaws. It isn't perfect, but it feels so much better. My SLO assessment that will go to my administration is a small manifesto for #Ungrading. This is new in my teaching and the past two years were so disrupted that I don't feel doing a statistical comparison of various years is a viable approach, but there is no doubt in my mind that my students learned better than in any previous semester of my 18+ year teaching career and that next cycle I will also have the data to show this. And writing up my SLO assessment was actually empowering rather than an awful chore.

Talking of chores, test grading went from a dreaded chore to a pretty quick and mostly actually uplifting experience! And tedious worksheet and lab grading has mostly evaporated (happy dance).

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Grade Less, Grade Differently: Lab, Research Poster Presentation

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Grade Less, Grade Differently: Lab, Research Poster Presentation

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As part of developing my active learning pedagogy, I have also changed many labs to a more inquiry-based approach to develop a deeper understanding of the scientific method, data competency and scientific communication. I have also brought #Ungrading into the lab space, particularly with #GradeLess. I will grade/give feedback on the first lab, but then I offer the students the opportunity not to turn in their labs as long as I have the impression that everyone is taking the lab seriously. Before, for example, if we did a lab about human body tissues, students would constantly ask me what they should look for/sketch/etc. for a particular slide they were viewing under the microscope and they would often focus more on their ‘bad’ drawing skills then the material. I was worried if I wasn't collecting and grading the labs, that students would just rush through a lab to get it done, but the opposite happened – students started to focus more on the material and less on what they thought I wanted or how their sketches looked. During the lab I would also ask questions – “what do you think the structure is that you sketched here?”, and give feedback – “don’t forget the labels”. I assessed these types of skills in the final with a short lab practical and I also felt that the student answers were much better than in the past.

As part of the lab, the teams of students also design and carry out a small lab experiment and then present it at the FRC Research Symposium as a research poster. The assignment is collaborative in nature and I have added collaboration with me in order to learn all aspects of creating the poster as part of #Ungrading. Before, I would give students a handout with instructions and I would offer to read through a draft (but students rarely took me up on this) and then I would grade the result. Now I also asset-frame this activity as a learning process for how to do a research poster (vs. students trying to follow my instructions and then me grading the team’s result), I scaffold the various steps and pieces with my instructions, but me giving feedback is built into the process now. As students develop their poster with some initial input from me, I give feedback whenever a team feels their draft is ready for feedback. There will be as several rounds of drafts and feedback as team feels they want/need and in the end each team has a poster that is ready to be presented at a research symposium. In the end, all students not only have had the opportunity to learn how to make a poster, but they have also had the opportunity to make mistakes and then improve their poster without it hurting their final grade and I can finish the course and send my students into the world knowing they all do know how to do a research poster.

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In this course I have stressed over and over that I wanted the focus to be less on grades and more on learning. Do you feel like the way the course was set-up accomplished this goal for you? Why or why not? 

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In this course I have stressed over and over that I wanted the focus to be less on grades and more on learning. Do you feel like the way the course was set-up accomplished this goal for you? Why or why not? 

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·         I think that this course is differently set-up for a focus on learning. As someone that obsesses over grades, I stressed myself at first with my focus on grades and it ended up with me just caring about what I learned.

·         I feel I have learned a lot more through this type of learning and grading than in my other classes. Being able to discuss and learn from classmates has helped me to focus less on just receiving a good grade and more on understanding the material.

·         This course allowed me to ask questions about material I felt I didn’t get rather than stress about it.

·         I liked it because it gave us an opportunity to put our minds to the test instead of just copying notes.

·         With the teaching and testing style of this course I was able to focus on learning and understanding the material by being able to go back and review and apply the notes we have taken in class.

·         I liked that I could focus on the material rather than cramming for a test.  I also liked how you apply the information in this course to lab and other connections.

·         Never once was I stressed about my grade, and I feel like I did learn the material.

·         This setup made coming to class less stressful and more fun.

·         The opportunity to debate my answers, challenging my perceptions and gaining perspective from alternative approaches really helped to understand and solve problems.
·         For my learning I looked to (names several students in the class) to understand. The opportunity to ask others is appreciated.

·         I feel I like I learned a lot and even when we had a test, I was not stressed about it because I felt confident.

·         I liked a lot of the small activities. From the outside they seemed a little ‘elementary’, but honestly, they really helped me grasp a lot of the concepts.

·         ·         I wasn’t as focused on grades which is huge for me. Instead, I was so fascinated by the course material that I was more focused on learning.

·         Being able to talk to others and have groups helped me so much. In the past I was always trying to figure out what the instructor wanted me to answer on a test whether I understood the material or not. I was a good student, but now I am a good student that understands the material.

·         I have always been very focused on grades and can sometimes rush through the learning in a course. This style of teaching allowed to put less stress on myself and work with others in order to learn the material better.

·         I think the labs and test set—up discussions helped me understand my own notes better because I could hear other people’s logic. And their logic would make me rethink the problem and/or review the material again.

·         It was nice that I was never stressed on getting high scores and I still completed all assignments.

·         The way this course is set-up allowed me to focus on the material and made me work to learn and grasp the concept rather than just memorizing a bunch of stuff.

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How have you changed as a scholar over the semester? What has helped you make those changes? What do you see as YOUR most significant changes and successes?

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How have you changed as a scholar over the semester? What has helped you make those changes? What do you see as YOUR most significant changes and successes?

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·         I learned not to focus on grades as much and this course helped me with that. I feel comfortable with the material and confident that I will be able to apply what I have learned in the future.

·         I have always been primarily focused on my grades in classes and sometimes I get too caught up in the grade that I overlook learning. This teaching style has helped me not to stress about the grade, as I can look to others and even change my mind if needed, helping me to look past the grade and focus on the material and lessons in the class.

·         I have completely changed as a scholar this year. I really like the class setting. It allowed me to learn more and alleviate all my stress.

·         I face the challenge of doing what I can do easily to get a good grade instead of putting in effort to learn the material. However, in this class that was not the case because I didn’t focus on my grade. I need to do that more.

·         I face struggles in fearing that I place a certain concept to an idea that might be a little off. I need to trust in my knowledge and know that I am able to explain my reasoning in a precise and thorough way.

·         I think I have improved with sharing my ideas with other without fears that my ideas are wrong or irrelevant.

·         My ability as a scholar has improved in the aspect that I feel more at home in a science classroom.

·         It’s giving me more confidence to be able to ask questions to deepen my understanding. Being about to ask questions has really been the key.

·         I have become more confident, and I am excited to learn. I think realizing that making mistakes is a good thing helped me want to ask more questions and participate.

·         I had space in the course to really begin to figure out what works for me, i.e. study habits, planning and time management.

·         I have learned not to obsess over grades. My most significant changes and successes are feeling more confident in myself and the material we learned.

·         By not focusing on my grade so much I have become more diligent with assignments. I am now motivated to actually do assignments on time rather than last minute or late.

·         My biggest change is my confidence in the ability to understand the material.

·         I have changed over this semester as I have been able to focus more on my education and understanding of the material rather than just looking at the grade I get. This has helped to be more engaged in class as well as I am focused on the material.

·         I have become a more focused student who thinks more critically and analytically rather than just memorizing.

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Initially I had worried about an increase in cheating or students taking advantage of peers that might work harder or prepare more thoroughly. I found the opposite. Trusting students to engage in their own learning seemed to make them very much less likely to cheat. I noticed that most students were stepping up to the plate rather than taking advantage of better prepared students and that in turn, everyone was willing to take the time to explain something to someone who wasn’t understanding the concept correctly. One student in particular did not step up to the plate but they also did not take advantage of others and fully acknowledged that they weren’t stepping up to the plate. A basic tenet of Kindness pedagogy is to approach teaching with an attitude of trusting students. Jesse Stommel always says to trust students. For me then, if I approached the students with kindness and trust, they responded with trustworthiness.

In fact, my trust extended pretty far. For one of my courses, I ended up having to travel for work on a date that I had scheduled the midterm for. I didn't want to reschedule and I decided that I would trust this class. My student worker was in the course and I decided to let her pass out and collect the tests and to let the class take the test without me. They had my cell number to ask questions if necessary, but no one did. At one point my student worker texted me: LOL, your question 2f has people almost fighting. They are arguing to hard. I reminded them that you always tell us that a well-thought out explanation is worth a lot, even if it is wrong but they are so serious in wanting to get it right. (my response: I love this class so much!)
Note: this was the Thursday afternoon before spring break. Students stayed to heatedly discuss an answer rather than starting spring break a bit early!
Also: I found absolutely no evidence that anyone consulted the internet or cheated in any way for this exam.

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Can I stay faculty advisor for a GPA-based academic honor society?

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Can I stay faculty advisor for a GPA-based academic honor society?

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One dilemma that I am having is that I am also the faculty advisor for Phi Theta Kappa (PTK), the international honor society for community college students. I have LOVED this role and I LOVE so many things about PTK like how they embrace diversity and incarcerated students and scholarship etc. But, membership is GPA-based... so there is that....
For now, I will be the faculty advisor for the next academic year. It will be interesting to see how my perceptions and feelings around this particular facet of grades and #Ungrading will evolve.

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Comments specifically about collaborating on the test #Ungrading #Untesting (= the test becomes another tool for learning)

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Comments specifically about collaborating on the test #Ungrading #Untesting (= the test becomes another tool for learning)

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·         I initially was wrong, but I learned from my classmates that round bacteria are ‘cocci’ and that grouped together = staphylo, not strepto. I realized that I had missed this lecture and never caught up on it – I need to be more careful about this!

·         I finally realized that colony description and bacterial morphology/arrangement are two different things. By me making this mistake, we all went back to the notes and got it straightened out. It made me realize that it is a good idea to check what is in my brain against my notes.

·         Everyone in my group disagreed with my answer but I stand by it after checking my notes. I also feel that I explained it really well. (It was a great answer!)

·         I remember being confused about this in lecture and my initial answer shows this, but after talking it over with my classmates I understand this now and the addition to my initial answers shows that.

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This padlet covers my first full year of experimenting with #Ungrading (grade less, grade differently, eliminate grades) for 3 majors-biology courses (Cell and Molecular Biology, Animal Biology, Plant Biology) and a bio-elective/allied health majors-bio course, General Microbiology.
Each course had between 12-19 students and included both the active learning approach + #Ungrading.