As Generative AI continues to present a challenge for traditional teaching and learning practices, many faculty are expressing curiosity about alternative grading, a term that includes several forms of assessment (such as contract grading or standards-based grading) where course grades are determined by students’ effort over time rather than by their performance on individual assessments. […]
New Publication: How Contract Grading Impacts Student Writing
A new article co-authored by Nate Mickelson (Expository Writing Program) and Timothy Schaffer (A&S Office of Teaching Excellence and Innovation) has just been published in College Teaching! The study, titled “How Does the Use of Contract Grading Affect the Quality of Student Writing?: A Comparative Study of Essays from First-Year Writing Courses,” examines the effects […]
Exploring Pedagogy: Authentic Assessment
What is authentic assessment? All assessments inherently do just that: assess. Authentic assessments, however, require students to apply what they’ve learned to a new situation. This is in comparison to a traditional exam that might ask students a multiple choice question. Identifying the correct answer can indicate learning, but doing so does not require students […]
Exploring Pedagogy: Ungrading
What role do grades play in learning? Susan D. Blum’s text Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead) encourages instructors to consider the above question. This scholar, in addition to countless others, is a part of a recent movement that seeks to de-emphasize grades attributed to student work in an effort […]
Contract Grading, Generative AI, and the Quest for Authentic Assessment
Contract Grading is an alternative grading format in which course grades are based on students’ fulfillment of a predetermined set of learning activities rather than solely on their performance on those activities. Two good examples of Arts & Science faculty use of contract grading can be found in Angela Zito’s Course Exemplar Design Gallery and […]