`I really appreciated Cathy Davidson's points on the arbitrary, outdated nature of traditional grading. She explains grade assignment as a "meaningless, superficial, cynical way to evaluate learning in a class." Rather than fostering a lifelong curiosity among students, grades turn learning into a "crass competition" according to Davidson. She describes a new system whereby students accrue points based on peer-to-peer and instructor evaluation and point totals correspond to different letter grades. If an assignment is deemed unsatisfactory by one's peers, s/he can choose to revise the work for full points. This informs class participants from the get-go how grading works and what class expectations are. Davidson legitimizes her plan, citing that "every study of peer review among students shows that students perform at a higher level, and with more care, when they know they are being evaluated by their peers than when they know only the teacher and the TA will be grading." She believes this system will promote responsibility, credibility, judgment, and honesty among her students, as well as preparing them to offer and receive thoughtful criticism.
Personally, I can fall victim to shooting for a good grade more than shooting for a good understanding of the subject. I create so much anxiety for myself trying to decipher what "high performance" in a class means, when I should be learning and growing from my course experience. I know this bad habit stems from my K-12 years of public education, where it seemed like all of my efforts should be geared towards getting into college. Since an admissions office can't see me and mainly sees my grades, many of us were taught to aim for the highest grade possible, cross our fingers, and make the best of what we got. Previously, my perception of college was more as a means to an end (aka a job) than a worthwhile opportunity for growth. Even now, a lot of students mindlessly attend lectures, begrudgingly complete assignments, and resentfully write papers and/or study for tests. Grades are "received" not earned, and each task is merely a cumbersome, stressful chore instead of an educational opportunity. Davidson's model, on the other hand, allows a student to truly "make" their grade by allowing them to revisit/redo past assignments based on feedback. This model gives students the freedom to make mistakes and learn from them – a tried-and-true method for growth, if you ask me – so that grades are not simply judgments but more faithful representations of understanding. This forces each student to view the flaws of their work and find a way to improve, which inadvertently inspires reflection and genuine interest for class subjects (instead of stress and frustration). I suppose, in a few words, Davidson's grading model appeals to me because it grants students the agency to define how they engage with and what they get out of a class.
As I have (sort of) pointed out on my blog, this isn't without minor issues. The primary flaw with this is that it simply assumes that students will all be critical of one another with utmost honesty because they want their peers to grow. However, as both you and I know, that isn't the case - we just want As so we have a nice GPA to stick on our resumes once we graduate. In an exclusively student-graded class, it's entirely possible you'll see a lot of quid pro quo going on with no respect for academic standards.
ReplyDeleteThe idea is sound, but before we change the methodology of grading entirely, we have to change the mindset of people and what they define success as.
I like your emphasis on the idea of allowing students to revisit/redo past assignments. This is extremely important when it comes to writing-based classes. Good writing is the product of endless amounts of hair pulling revision. If students never feel like they need to revise their work, then how will their writing improve? You can read Strunk and White all you want, but writing is all about practice.
ReplyDeleteWell, I'm glad that you're no longer treating college as vocational training. I'm also a firm advocate of separating vocational training from classical education in the university setting.
It's ultimately dependent on the discipline you're studying. I became a rhetoric major just this year after spending not just my first two college years, but my entire high school and even middle school life set on a pre-med track. Even now, as a rhetoric major, I'm still working to complete the prerequisites of a pre-med distinction because I'm so close to finishing anyway. Alongside my 3 rhetoric classes, I'm taking a genetics class and while I appreciate the abstraction of my rhetoric learning, I can understand why the fact-delivering method of teaching sciences is in place. That said, the model sucks. It's mindless work, and so incredibly far away from anything I'm doing in rhetoric classes -- but I'm spending a disproportionately large amount of time on trying to get a good grade in that class. The only critical ability I've picked up from the class has been absorbing a large amount of information in a short period of time -- a valuable skill, no doubt, but nowhere near what I want out of an education at this point.
ReplyDeleteAnd still, the only thing that has worried me about being a rhetoric major is that lack of utility that comes with the discipline. I've learned some amazing stuff and my horizons have been effectively broadened, but after being inundated with the necessity to find work after graduating, and choosing pre-med because of it, I'm in a bit of shock now, trying to come up with personal justifications for my departure. I'm absolutely better for choosing the rhetoric major, but intangible so.
Intangibly**
ReplyDeleteStupid iPhone autocorrect.
I agree with the importance of being able to revise. I never understood why not all writing assignments are revisable. I understand that re-taking a math exam may not be fair, and I understand why intermediate assignments are graded (so the teacher and student both have a good idea of the student's progression.) But I think writing assignments are different.
ReplyDeleteSo I write a paper, and it gets a C. What does that mean? I met the teacher's expectations at an average level. My next two papers may receive low A's, but my average would be a B. That sucks. Most of the time later assignments are weighted more (which I think is fair), but sometimes they're not. One should expect students to perform better over the course of a class, as they become more familiar with the material.
In another rhetoric course, we had 3 major papers. The first submission of a paper was never graded (in fact, most students received "no grade", not because we were stupid but because we weren't familiar with the professor's expectations.) If you received a grade on the first submission, congrats. It didn't count, but you could expect to do well on the next submission. The 2nd and 3rd submissions actually counted, and the prof offered feedback at every step in the process.
On the 2nd paper, getting a "no grade" on the first submission wasn't bad - the topics were generally very different and required different methods of research. But by the time we wrote the 3rd paper, getting a "no grade" on the 1st submission would be tantamount to getting a 0.
I think that's fair. By the last third of a course, we should be able to write a decent first submission, especially since we had submitted a total of six papers before that point. And we never had to do a 3rd submission. If your first submission of the 3rd paper earned you an A in the course, there was no need to submit it two more times. If you only wanted a B, you could stop once you got a B. Our prof even encouraged us not to waste our time revising papers once we had the grade we wanted (though she wanted us all to earn As).
Those courses with that prof managed to be the most difficult of my courses at UT, but they were also the most rewarding. I earned the grade I wanted in all of her courses, and even if I fell short I would at least be satisfied knowing that I always had the potential to revise my papers. Getting less than what I wanted would've only been fair, because the prof was very clear about what she expected out of her students.
At various times in her course we would do peer reviews, but the prof would point out that sometimes peers would offer contradictory advise (i.e., "this paper needs more quotes" and "there's too many quotes in here" on the same paper). Also, they'd get things plain wrong sometimes. But our reviews themselves weren't graded, and didn't factor into our final grades. The peer reviews were useful, but ultimately it fell on the student to earn his/her grade, and I was very happy with that process.
I think you're right... grades do seem to prevent students from learning from their mistakes. A grade, like you say, is a judgment. Once the judgment has been issued, the impression is one of finality. There's no need for further revision; we've evaluated it, we can move on. But in the real world, texts do not receive single, categorical judgments. They are exposed to far too wide and homogeneous audience for that. Texts in the real world are undergoing constant revision. Good writers will study these revisions and attempt to learn from their mistakes in order to become more effective communicators. In order to do well as writers and communicators, then, students need to be taught to seek criticism from more than a single source.
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