{"id":552,"date":"2020-11-09T20:04:08","date_gmt":"2020-11-09T20:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/catherinedenial.org\/blog\/?p=552"},"modified":"2020-11-09T20:04:08","modified_gmt":"2020-11-09T20:04:08","slug":"ungrading-in-a-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/catherinedenial.org\/blog\/uncategorized\/ungrading-in-a-pandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"Ungrading in a Pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in the Before Times, I wrote a blog post about ungrading<\/a>, and how it had made an enormous difference in the experience of grading for both my students and myself.\u00a0 Grading went from being a chore to being a delight, and I thought I had found The Way (tip o\u2019 the hat to The Mandalorian) from which I would only deviate if I could improve upon it.<\/p>\n

Ha!<\/p>\n

Enter the pandemic.<\/p>\n

Where once I had every student come into my office to collaboratively decide on the grades attached to their major assignments, it proved impossible for me to that this term.\u00a0 I could have held some version of that conversation over Zoom, but I\u2019ll be frank \u2013 the idea of spending that many hours on Zoom over a period of days felt horrifying.\u00a0 (If you\u2019re someone who\u2019s managed that, you have my sincere admiration!)\u00a0 Regular instruction also took much more time than usual, not because of the switch to online teaching, but because my students and I were all feeling the effects of executive dysfunction and other symptoms of trauma from the pandemic and all its associated losses.\u00a0 I plain did not have the time or energy to collaborate in the same way I had in person.\u00a0 But I was still committed to the umbrella practice of ungrading and all the benefits I knew it could bring to teaching and learning.<\/p>\n

So I instituted two short-answer sets of questions to which my students responded each week.\u00a0 The first was due every Monday, and asked them to engage in retrieval practice by telling me three things they remembered as being important from the week before.\u00a0 (There was also an extra space for them to free-write on anything else they wanted me to know.)\u00a0 The second was due the morning of our once-weekly Zoom session, and asked them to reflect on the week\u2019s readings by telling me what new things they learned, what we should talk about that week, whether they were confused by anything, and whether they had anything else they wanted to share.\u00a0 I also asked them to tell me how much of the reading they\u2019d done \u2013 not to get them into trouble or to judge them, but to help me plan for class.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
A sample screenshot of the questions my students answered<\/center><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Both of these sets of questions were ungraded, and yet everyone consistently, diligently filled them in.\u00a0 This allowed me identify and email students who were having difficulty getting work done, didn\u2019t understand some of the concepts in our reading, or were struggling for any other number of reasons.\u00a0 I also got to share in their delight as they discovered new information about the past.\u00a0 I got to take their questions and use them to shape our discussions so that they not only got answers to their queries, but were co-creators of each class session.\u00a0 It meant there was a constant flow of information back and forth between my students and myself, and set up a relationship in which graded assignments were not the primary method of communication.<\/p>\n

I know these students perhaps better than any I have ever had.\u00a0 And I think they probably know me better too, warts and all.\u00a0 It\u2019s been a joyful way to assess how my students are doing and how the class is working.\u00a0 And all it has unfolded without a grade.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in the Before Times, I wrote a blog post about ungrading, and how it had made an enormous difference in the experience of grading for both my students and myself.\u00a0 Grading went from being a chore to being a delight, and I thought I had found The Way (tip o\u2019 the hat to The Mandalorian) from which I would only deviate if I could improve upon it. Ha! Enter the pandemic. Where once I had every student come into…<\/p>\n

Read More Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catherinedenial.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catherinedenial.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catherinedenial.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catherinedenial.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catherinedenial.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/catherinedenial.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catherinedenial.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catherinedenial.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catherinedenial.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}