[Gradebook] Grades without points

[jhurley]

I don't know why Canvas insists upon points for grading. Many of us are moving towards grading systems without points or letter grades (standards-based grading or specifications grading). Linda Nilson's book Specifications Grading has popularized a way of grading that does not use cumulative points, but bases the letter grade on the number and type of assignments completed successfully. Please, Canvas, give us a way to record student grades in a non-point format. I use High Pass, Pass, Low Pass, and Not Yet Passing as the grading scheme for my essays, but there is no way to indicate this in my students' gradebook, aside from in the comments section. I have to use an elaborate work-around to give my students a grade update.

[laurakgibbs]

Don't worry,  @jhurley ! I am not going to stop bringing up the issue here, and when the new Gradebook finally does debut, that will be an opportunity to have these discussions again. And again.

One great thing about the Canvas Community here is that at least there IS some discussion about grading; I've been involved in several very lively conversations about that here as prompted by feature requests or people's blog posts ( @KristinL ‌ published some blog posts this summer all about grading philosophy and strategies) ... and that is far better than the situation at my school where there is literally no discussion about grading going on. There's not even a place for such discussion to happen. Everybody just seems to take grading for granted, when instead IMO it is where we should be focusing our most critical attention and creative experiments.

And I always urge people to check out the #TTOG stream in Twitter. It's an endless source of inspiration, although it is mostly K-12 instructors. Even though as college instructors we actually have far more freedom to approach grading in different ways, we seem to make far less use of that freedom: argh! So, I am really grateful to the K-12 people who are leading the way! Here's what's up at the stream at this very moment; two of my favorite people are there at the latest tweets:

[jhurley]

Thanks, Laura. Your message was inspiring. I am connected to TTOG through Facebook, and these teachers gave me the confidence to go gradeless (except for a final grade, which I’m required to give). It’s been working so well, and I’ve been presenting around the country about it. I’ll link you to an article that I wrote about my move towards feedback, no rubric/points/grade. I will be writing more about this in upcoming months and in fact am taking a sabbatical in the spring in order to write a book on this topic. Please keep in touch!

Why I Threw Away My Rubrics

P.S. I agree that it’s strange that so little innovation is taking place in colleges, when we have more freedom to experiment! However, I am finding that there is interest out there in these ideas. We just need to make the argument and present student feedback.

Jennifer Hurley

Associate Professor of English

Ohlone College, Newark Campus

[laurakgibbs]

Oh wow, this is great, I am going to go share via Twitter. I've never been tempted to use rubrics, and your story gets at all the reasons I went with student-responsive feedback; esp. for the kinds of courses I teach (ranging from future writing professionals to totally reluctant writers), I couldn't ever see how a rubric would serve that wide swath of students. My students just started writing this first stories this week and I am feeling that same excitement you talk about here: after the summer break, I am so ready to get back into the feedback business again! 

I've been documenting my student blog network here if that is of any interest; I am a huge fan of blogs as a student writing space. 🙂

https://community.canvaslms.com/people/laurakgibbs/blog/2017/08/31/fall-2017-story-of-a-blog-network... 

[laurakgibbs]

P.S.  @jhurley ‌ are you at Twitter? I just shared there but wasn't sure how to ping you. Thank you again for this great piece; I need to go add it to my UnGrading files now! 

http://Grading.MythFolklore.net

[jhurley]

Hi Laura,

I am not on Twitter, but I may have to be to gain access to all of the TTOG resources! I would love to know how you have students grade themselves … I think I am moving in that direction. I will check out your blog and will ping you when I’m on Twitter! Thanks for sharing my piece … I think it’s amazing the kind of community that is developing around this issue.

Jennifer Hurley

Associate Professor of English

Ohlone College, Newark Campus

[laurakgibbs]

 @jhurley  It's hard to have conversations on Twitter, but it is fun! And it plays VERY nice with Canvas too. 🙂

I wrote a guest post for Starr's EdWeek blog that explains my un-grading; it's worked so well for me for many years:

Anatomy of an Online Course: (Un)Grading: It Can Be Done in College 

But the best part is the students' comments... here's what they say:

Anatomy of an Online Course: Grading: What Students Say 

[goodwinn]

I have a rather simply, but unorthodox, grading system for my high school math classes. I give NO tests throughout the entire course, however, my students MUST complete 100% of all work assigned AND they must correct any and all mistakes until the assignments are 100% correct. On day 1 my students think they have died and gone to heaven. However, later, when they are submitting the same assignment for the third time and they are still struggling to understand how to use trigonometry to find the missing side of a triangle, they begin to long for a test they could fail. Canvas definitely needs greater flexibility in its grading options. When my father was teaching math and science in the 1970s nearly every teacher used points and percentages for grading. Teachers today are trying to find ways to give their students meaningful feedback on their learning, not simply give them meaningless, subjective, grades.

[engleh]

I look forward to the absence of points and percentages on my Canvas gradebook. Have never used them at my school, and the workarounds and constant explanations to students and parents are becoming tedious. Thank you for considering this request.

[jnewt]

It is perplexing to me why Canvas doesn't respond to the numerous requests for an alphanumeric gradebook entry.  My university used Blackboard in the past and alphanumeric entries were an easy option in that platform.  Surely the Canvas staff could add this feature if they were so inclined. https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/1603-cant-a-letter-grade-just-be-a-letter-gradehttps://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/4956-grades-without-points

[julie_ryan]

As a health care institution, our pass/fail courses are all non-point based. We've had to do a bunch of work-arounds. I can't wait for Canvas to catch up.