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Center for Innovative Teaching & Learning Indiana University Bloomington

Shifting the Focus Back to Learning with “Ungrading”

Posted on by Ren Maloney

As a staunch believer in grades, I was hesitant at first to engage with the practice of ungrading. I mean, who doesn’t love working hard and getting that gold star as a reward? Am I right? Grades, for me, became a source of comfort—I knew I was performing well and achieving the goals my instructor had set for me when an “A” came across my desk, and I knew I had to improve and work harder toward those goals when it didn’t.

When first presented with the concept of ungrading, I had a slew of questions, all surrounding my fears of the unfamiliar: How are we meant to measure student success? What will motivate students to better their understanding of course content? How do I rebuild my course to emphasize ungrading without taking away necessary scaffolding?

Though ungrading may not be a practice that you use often, it can be a great steppingstone to getting your students more involved in a course, as they are asked to talk through their understanding of content with you.

What is ungrading? 

Ungrading is “a practice which eliminates or greatly minimizes the use of assigned points or letter grades in a course, focusing instead on providing frequent and detailed feedback to students on their work, in relation to the course learning goals” (Kenyon). This can take many different forms but usually puts a great deal of the onus on students to negotiate and argue for their understanding of the course content and whether that understanding should translate into a satisfactory completion of the course. Feedback and constant communication between the instructor and the student are absolutely crucial components of ungrading (Talbert). Without these, ungrading can fall into “completion grading,” where students simply gain points for completing an assignment and don’t receive meaningful information apart from the points given for the assignment.

How can I use it?

There are endless possibilities for using ungrading practices, but here are a few examples that I have come across in my time as a student and an instructor:

  • Grade Yourself: In this form of ungrading, students are given an assignment with parameters to stay within and goals that they should achieve. Students complete the assignment and turn it in. The instructor gives comments/feedback but does not assign a grade. Based on the comments/feedback, the students reflect on their completion of the assignment and assign themselves a grade. They write a short reflection piece detailing the reasons they gave themselves that grade. The instructor can agree with the student or can ask them to reconsider the grade. This negotiation of a grade with students is a way to have students critically think about their learning—do they believe they achieving the goals of the course?
  • Effort=A: This ungrading practice allows students to let go of grade anxiety with a start-of-semester classroom contract, saying that as long as all assignments are completed and all additional learning objectives and course components are met (i.e., participation, etc.), that all students will receive an automatic “A” in the course. Assignments are still given due dates and receive comments/feedback, but no grades are exchanged throughout the semester. Students often overthink about grades, and this ungrading allows students to focus on the content rather than question if they are getting an “A.”
  • Specs Grading: This form of ungrading, similar to “Effort=A,” gives students certain specifications that they must meet in order to pass. It’s important to note that assignments are “graded” on a pass/fail or satisfactory/unsatisfactory basis, so there are no true points given. If a student receives an “unsatisfactory,” they are given the opportunity to try to meet the specs of that assignment again. These specs grading frameworks should be detailed, so that students know what goals they need to meet in order to achieve a “satisfactory” score. This ensures that students are clear on the course objectives and clear on how to achieve them.
  • Do, Revise, Submit: In this ungrading practice, students are asked to complete an assignment (a test, a paper, etc.) and are then given feedback on things that may not have been wholly correct or need improvement. You can assign a grade or not assign a grade at this time. Students can choose to revise the assignment based on this feedback or can choose to keep their assignment the way it is. They then submit the full assignment for final comments and the final grade. This gives students agency over their grade, as they are able to decide whether to budget their time to revising the assignment or decide that they are happy with the current grade.

What are the benefits? 

Through ungrading, students are able to focus solely on their work in the course, without the haunting distraction of whether or not their test will be returned with a gold star or if their paper will be handed back covered in red ink and a heavily circled “C-.”

Ungrading can encourage students to adopt a growth mindset, can increase student motivation, and can help mitigate inherent power dynamics at play in a classroom (Lafayette).

If you have any questions or would like to schedule a consultation with me to review your teaching statements, please email me at citlgrad@iu.edu.

If you are a graduate student or postdoc interested in learning more about ungrading please consider attending CITL’s “How to Implement Ungrading Practices into Your Classroom (for graduate students and postdocs)” workshop on April 9.

References:

Kenyon, Amy. “What Is Ungrading?”Duke Learning Innovation & Lifetime Education, 21 Sept. 2022, https://lile.duke.edu/blog/2022/09/what-is-ungrading/.

Talbert, Robert. “Specifications Grading: We May Have a Winner.”Robert Talbert, Ph.D., 28 Apr. 2017, https://rtalbert.org/specs-grading-iteration-winner/.

“Why Do Ungrading?”Center for the Integration of Teaching, Learning, and Scholarship, Lafayette College, https://citls.lafayette.edu/why-do-ungrading/.

Additional Reading:

Blum, S. D., & Kohn, A.Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (And What to Do Instead). West Virginia University Press, 2020.

Soliciting Student Feedback: How Did This Post Help You Develop Your Own OCQ Questions? 

Posted on by Sarah Pedzinski

Writer writing on computerIt is a truth universally acknowledged, that the automated Online Course Questionnaire (OCQ) system asks me to write my own questions for end-of-term evaluations at the most hectic point in the semester. I sincerely want to critically reflect on my pedagogical practices and generate some meaningful questions, but I also have 25 papers to grade, a quiz to write, and a Canvas page to update with new resources for my students. Where would I even begin?

Some background:

Indiana University uses the OCQ system to distribute and collect end-of-term student evaluations. This system automatically asks nine university-decided questions about learning goals, class activities, out-of-class work, instructor availability, and motivation. Departments can add their own questions, and, at one of the busiest points in the semester, the system prompts instructors to generate their own course-specific questions. (For spring 2025, the “question personalization” window is March 24 – April 20.)

If you ignore the prompt to write your own questions for the OCQs, you find yourself in good company: most instructors I work with bypass this opportunity because of time constraints or uncertainty about what to write. Nevertheless, for instructors looking for feedback on their courses, it is one of my most recommended strategies.

Why should you generate your own OCQ questions?

  1. Assess particular teaching strategies or assignments. Use end-of-term questions to evaluate the facets of your class that you are most interested in. Are you intentionally trying to be more inclusive? Implement more active learning activities? You can use the OCQs to gather feedback about these topics. Consider asking if students felt a sense of belonging in your class or if they can rank your major assignments from most-to-least helpful. Think an exam is too hard? Ask students how the exams impacted their learning.
  2. Gather student intel on course materials. Asking specific questions about materials allows you to make informed adjustments to your course. As a literature instructor, I like to ask my students about which novel or short story they will tell their friends about. You might consider asking students if the assigned textbook was helpful, or how they used it to study.
  3. Document evidence of student learning for your dossier. End-of-semester evaluations can certainly be problematic and biased, but you can leverage them in your dossiers. Are students emailing you about skills from your course that helped them with other courses? Ask about it in a Likert scale (strongly disagree, disagree, neutral, agree, strongly agree): Skills I learned in this course positively affected my work in other courses. Now, in addition to student testimony, you can add quantitative evidence to your teaching statement which highlights your goal of helping students develop transferable skills.

How do you generate your own OCQ questions?

Next week (Friday, 3/28, 1:00pm), my colleague Maggie Gilchrist and I are hosting a workshop titled, “Crafting Course-Specific OCQ Questions to Gather Meaningful Feedback,” that directly responds to this question! If you’re interested but cannot attend, reach out to us at citl@iu.edu to schedule a consultation. Be sure to think ahead because the window for writing your own questions closes April 20th!

Additional Resources:

Instructor Spotlight: “It was nice to do something different, unexpected, active and collaborative”  

Posted on by Leslie Drane

Photo of Thomas YuleAre you a planner like I am? My colleagues often tease that I love to-do lists. My brain is happiest when I take a massive task and break it into digestible chunks. Are you similar? Or maybe you find big tasks daunting and you want help identifying smaller steps?  

However you approach tasks, I think we can all agree that developing or re-designing a course is a big undertaking. But it’s not to tackle alone—the 2025 Foundational Course Development Institute (CDI) can help! During the CDI, we meet every day from May 12th – 16th and participants work through the beginning phases of developing or transforming a course.  

During CDI, we introduce strategies for student engagement. Thomas Youle, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Business Economics and Public Policy at Kelley, participated in the 2024 CDI. Thomas reached out after trying the “gallery walk” activity. The gallery walk is when students hang something they produced (drawings, posters, etc.) around the classroom. Students then walk around observing the work, providing feedback to their classmates. Thomas shared, “I did the Gallery Walk … in my new course G-400 Capstone for Economic Consulting. All the students are working on data-driven final projects, and I had them write explanations of their projects and give each other feedback. The class was a great success! The students learned by writing their projects on the giant Post-it notes, they learned about what their peers were doing, and then they learned from the feedback they got. Very grateful for this and the other ideas and techniques you shared with us this summer.” 

Thomas had many reasons for trying the activity, including the timing for their projects. He says, “They had all had decided on their project questions and found their relevant datasets. But they had not yet started writing a rough draft of their paper. In my experience one of the challenges students face in statistical projects such as these is communicating clearly what they are doing to an external audience. Usually, students presume the audience knows more than they do, leading to confusion. My hunch was that their peers could either directly ask clarifying questions or indirectly reveal their confusion, leading to a recognition of the importance of clarity in their writing.”  

Reflecting on the experience, Thomas shared, “The energy in the room was great. One student at the time told me she greatly enjoyed it and that I should do it in future classes. And several groups mentioned feedback they got from their peers as motivating them to do X or Y with their projects. Also, I think student attendance has increased in the weeks afterwards. Moreover, it was a lot less work for me than my traditional lecturing! I was pleased also with what my students wrote on the giant Post-its and the comments they gave to each other. My sense was they took all elements of it seriously.” 

Give the gallery walk a try! If you’re wanting to learn more activities like these for a new course or a course that needs some revision, apply to the CDI by April 14th, 9 a.m. ET.  

 

Transparent Teaching with AI: Enhancing Metacognition

Posted on by Eric Brinkman (they/them)

Quick Tip lightbulb logoAre your assignments transparent about how you would like students to use generative AI? Transparency is a highly research-supported teaching and learning concept that demonstrates that explaining why you do what you do in the classroom improves learning outcomes and increases equity. (To use AI to ease the burden of the labor of making the purpose, task, and criteria of all your assignments explicit, read my previous tip.)

Along with purpose, task, and criteria of your assignment, students need to know if and how you would like them to use AI to complete it. At IU, some instructors are allowing students to use it and some are not, and even within a single course an instructor might sometimes promote or sometimes disallow the use of AI, which can be confusing for a student taking a full load of classes. So to be more transparent, you can add to the criteria that they are not allowed to use AI for an assignment (and why), or add in the task how (and why) you would like them to use it. For example, I often ask students to use AI to brainstorm a list of potential ideas before choosing one and telling me why. Research on this approach of asking students to reflect on the answers provided by AI is beginning to show that training students to approach their use of AI metacognitively can also help them develop the skill of being reflexive about how they approach completing assignments, which is a fast track to improving learning.

To participate in a workshop that will focus on how to use generative AI to improve your assignment transparency, sign up for our workshop Meaningful Assessments in the Age of AI: Policy and Practice (Part 1). For more on how generative AI can impact your teaching, you can self-enroll in our “GenAI in the Classroom” modules, attend a Faculty Showcase on Infusing Generative AI into Your Assignments, or watch a Kaltura recording of our Faculty Showcase on how instructors are creatively using AI to support teaching large enrollment courses. Contact the CITL with questions or for a personal teaching consultation on how generative AI can improve your teaching and learning outcomes.

Peer Review Makes Writing More Authentic for Students

Posted on by Layli Miron

Photo of a desktop with laptop, paper, and pen.Can you remember the last project you wrote for a single reader? How about the last one you finished in one draft and with zero input from peers?

In papers written for one reader (the instructor) without peer feedback (classmates), learners face an artificial situation. They write to perform—not to communicate, the purpose of most writing done beyond the classroom’s walls.

We have various options for making writing assignments more authentic. In my own teaching, I’ve experimented with community-engaged writing projects, in which the collaborating organization selected a few students’ pieces for publication; ePortfolios, which will ideally reach an online audience; and group writing assignments (check out the upcoming workshop Assigning Group Writing Projects to Teach Teamwork & Collaboration).

Those methods sound great in theory, you might be thinking, but don’t they require a lot of coordination by the instructor? That’s true—but I have good news. There’s a relatively simple option for making your writing assignments more authentic: facilitating peer review. In peer review, students provide feedback on each other’s drafts with an eye toward revising. This method restores the communicative purpose to writing in a couple ways:

  • Peer review inherently grants students an audience beyond their instructor, giving them a realistic experience of writing for a heterogenous readership. (Ferris & Hedgcock, 2023)
  • Students will get practice with critiquing colleagues’ work diplomatically and receiving feedback graciously. Whatever the future holds for students, I guarantee that these skills will serve them well.

Additionally, by analyzing classmates’ writing, students will become more attentive to their own writing. In fact, the giver of feedback often benefits as much as the recipient—i.e., giver’s gain (Eli Review, 2022). Research (and my own teaching experience) shows that with training, undergrads can give feedback that’s just as good as what the professor would give (Bean & Melzer, 2021).

The training is crucial. Before I developed robust training, a particularly forthright student lamented that peer review felt like the ignorant guiding the ignorant. Students, afraid to offend each other, were offering simplistic comments along the lines of “Looks great, just make sure to fix your commas.

I realized that I needed to figure out what kinds of feedback I wanted students to give each other—and model the process with them before they embarked on the first peer review. If you’re ready to develop or revamp peer review training and structure, I’d love to talk with you.

For more about the “how” of facilitating effective peer review, check out Giving Feedback with Peer Review and Rubrics: Why and How? on March 11 at 11:00 a.m., which you can join in person or on Zoom. Relatedly, my colleagues have written helpful tips on teaching writing as a process and using the Canvas peer review tool.

One last thought: Students’ misuse of generative AI for writing assignments reveals their alienation from schoolwork. To restore the primacy of human writers and readers—exchanging ideas, interacting, communicating—we need to ask students to read their classmates’ writing and have conversations about it.

 

Finding Ports in the Storm: Breaking Up Teaching Portfolio Construction into Manageable Sections

Posted on by Ren Maloney

Cartoonish pirate map showing the route to a treasure.Teaching portfolios are large documents used majorly for academic job applications and promotion. They serve as collections for everything surrounding your teaching, including teaching statements, diversity statements, syllabi, activities, lesson plans, teaching evaluations, course descriptions, and fourth wall-breaking justifications or explanations for pedagogical choices. This daunting list can create some anxieties about where to start, but I find it helpful to break up the list into manageable sections.  

Try creating an online checklist to help you space out the creation of your teaching portfolio. Don’t take on all the items at once—instead, find ports for yourself in the storm, places where you feel at a confident stopping place. At each port, refuel, hold a parrot, take a break, and decide on where your journey should take you next. The timing of some of those stops will align with your semester—when you have completed a new assignment and have data about student success on it, or when you get course evaluations at the end of the semester.

(Might I also recommend making your checklist into a pirate map? Creating unconventional task lists can help when you’re feeling stagnant with a traditional to-do list.)  

If you have any questions or would like to schedule a consultation with me to review your teaching portfolios, please email me at citlgrad@iu.edu. 

If you are a graduate student or postdoc interested in learning more about teaching portfolios, please consider attending CITL’s “Creating a Teaching Portfolio (for graduate students and postdocs)” workshop on March 26.