I Tried Using Shorter, Low-Stakes Assessments for One Semester and Here's What Happened

[michellez]

Hi Community!

I have been teaching in a higher education graduate school for more than fourteen years and until my fall 2017 semester, I had been calculating my students' grades based on an 80% paper and a 20% multiple choice exam. This was tradition.  This was simply the way things had always been done.  Sure, one paper being worth 80% of a student's final grade was a high stake (when I was in school, this paper was worth 100% - that's progress!), but I figured that was simply what students needed to take the assignment seriously and put in the time and effort needed to earn a good grade. Were there problems from year to year? Yes. Other faculty members would notice and often complain that the students who were so consumed with the high-stakes paper were unprepared in their other classes - or worse - were absent from their other classes.  The concentration on my high-stakes paper was having a negative impact on the students' learning in their other classes. Also, the students themselves often complained about the stress they felt from feeling overwhelmed by having their grade ride almost entirely on this one assignment. 

This past fall, I decided to try a new approach.  Instead of two, I had five graded assessments. The assessments ranged in value from 5% to 40%. I found that the students took each assignment and my feedback seriously under this new assessment strategy, as they knew each assessment would impact their grade to some degree. I also found that they were eager to ask questions to be sure they understood the material. The 40% assessment was for the final paper.  While this was much less than 80%, I found that students were still feeling some anxiety from the weight given.  I will be tweaking my value system next semester so that no assessment will have a value greater than 25% and I am hopeful that this will reduce even more stress. In addition, I will be using Canvas for the first time this semester (I am part of the initial pilot program at my institution) and I am thankful for its organization and clarity - another stress reducer. If anyone has any similar experiences or has used Canvas effectively for a class with multiple, low-stakes assessments, please feel free to share.

[Stef_retired]

Hi,  @michellez ! I used to teach writing-intensive courses for a four-year college. When I first designed a course, I was mindful of how daunting high-stakes assignments can be, and didn't want to put my students in the position where a single assignment would make or break their success. In addition, I wanted my students to learn how to craft a short, punchy essay that got the point across quickly; since my students were, by and large, not going to pursue higher degrees in the humanities, I wanted them to come away from the class with a practical skill they could apply in their chosen professions (that they could use to write a good email, for example). I was also mindful of their time, as many of my students had full-time jobs, or families, or both.

I decided to structure the course thusly:

16 matching question quizzes, 0.5% each, two lowest scores dropped;

16 20-question multiple-choice quizzes, 1.0% each, two lowest scores dropped;

16 short reflection essays, at 3.5% each, two lowest scores dropped;

2 long-form essays, contributing 8% and 15% respectively. 

(I'm doing this from memory, and I tinkered with these from semester to semester depending on how many weeks were in the semester, so I hope my math works!)

I staggered due dates across the week so that students became accustomed to engaging with the course at least three times a week. They would do the simplest (matching) first, then the slightly more demanding multiple-choice quizzes. Those assessments gave them the opportunity to master the knowledge they'd need to draw from to demonstrate their understanding in the reflection essays. By dropping the two lowest scores on the smaller weekly assessments, I thought students could feel comfortable about taking off a week or two or skipping one or two. They received continuous feedback from me on their weekly writing assignments, which prepared them nicely for the first long-form essay that was due right around mid-term. And by the end of the semester, they had had enough practice to do well on the second, longer essay, which had a bigger impact on their grades.

One other thing—and this required some manual tinkering on my part: Even though the two long-form essays combined only contributed 8% and 15% of the grade, I made successful completion of those essays a prerequisite for earning a C or higher in the course. Since students would not get credit toward their degree for completing their writing-intensive requirement if they didn't earn a C, students had to take those essays seriously. And in five years of teaching the course in this fashion, only one out of perhaps a thousand students even questioned this.

Once I adopted this approach, my retention rate was excellent, and students' success rate: even better.

I love conversations around content chunking and improving student workflows! Thanks for posting this!

[michellez]

Wow, thanks so much stefaniesandersfor this insightful reply! I appreciate you sharing the details of your experience. These are great ideas that I hope to incorporate as I continue on this path. I am not complete with my grading yet, but I am noticing many more higher quality papers this semester.  I know there can be many factors involved, but I believe that more assessments, each with a low value (but not zero), created a "push" for the students to take their assignments seriously from the beginning.  The pay-off is the higher-quality writing overall.

[kmeeusen]

Hi  @michellez ‌

Thank you for starting this discussion! I have been teaching in health career programs for almost 20 years now, and for me everything is high-stakes in my courses; or at least, everything defined by my course outcomes! I don't want somebody providing health care to my loved ones who did not master the outcomes in my courses at an acceptable level.

So my courses are high-stakes, but my assessments are not. I use many varied assessments throughout a term, and they are regular and frequent, and I offer a rather rigorous optional assessment mastery option.

I am also somewhat liberal when it comes to late submissions, time limits on quizzes and other similar accommodations, because like Stefanie above my students are older and have lives outside of school.

What I am saying is that my bottom line is that successful students in my courses have demonstrated that they have met the learning outcomes of my courses at a high level by the end of the term, but they have done so in small incremental  and often repetitive reinforcing steps. My students do not have to demonstrate their learning one one massive activity that robs them of the joys of learning, robs them of sleep, robs them of time in other courses and activities, and is incredibly easy to screw up because of illness, crisis or any other happenstance. Furthermore, the very large high-stake assessment activity encourages cramming. As all of us know, cramming is no learning not matter how successful it is for that one assessment - a week later all that learning is gone, and my students need that learning for the life of their careers.

I have had teachers from very difficult courses like A & P tell their students that my course is the hardest one they will ever take. I don't know if they are right, but my success rates are very high, and my reward comes when a student tells me "I never thought I could learn so much!"

Thank you for breaking out of that "this is the way it has always been done" rut, and helping your students achieve a more meaningful mastery!

Kelley

[laurakgibbs]

Hi  @michellez ‌! I was so happy as soon as I saw the title of your blog post, and like Stefanie said already, the strategy of going for multiple low-stakes writing assignments was transformative for my classes. In my semester at University of Oklahoma, I taught basically how I had been taught with me encouraging participation, but the grading based on a few high-stakes items. Argh. It did not go well. I threw all that out and tried different experiments... and then when I started teaching online (this was back in 2002), I had the freedom to really go wild, since in an online course each student can really be doing a "course of their own," choosing what they work on in a way that is very individualized.

So, just as an example of what happens at the far far far far end of the low-stakes spectrum, my classes now consist of over 200 microactivities during a semester, with students choosing usually around 80-90 assignments that they complete. Many of those activities are related to a final project (here are their projects), while other activities are more transitory, taking place in their blogs (here are their blogs).

I also display a blog stream and project stream INSIDE Canvas. The projects haven't started yet, but you can see the blog stream here (my classes are open, so just click and look):

Blog Stream: MLLL-3043 Myth-Folklore 

similarly in my India class

 It is admittedly an unusual approach, so I make sure to explain to students how that works in the very first assignment of the semester:

Online Course Wiki / Design Your Course

I've been doing this so long that it seems completely normal to me, but I always have to remind myself that students are in other classes that are still based on high-stakes tests and exams and papers. I am really glad to have the freedom to shift in a different direction for both the learning and the assessment, and I am also glad to hear you are having good success in your own question for the big boost that microlearning activities can provide!

Small IS Beautiful. 🙂

[laurakgibbs]

I must have been writing my reply at the same time you were, Kelley! I love this part:
"I never thought I could learn so much!"

That is the BEST thing a teacher can hear from a student. 🙂

The equivalent in my class is:

"I never thought I was creative!"

[laurakgibbs]

Just out of curiosity, are other people having trouble with jive today? It has been logging me out, deleting comments. I have been writing comments in a separate window to copy-and-paste since it has been acting so weird!

[kmeeusen]

Yep, it just went down for a couple minutes, came back sort of sketchy, went down again, and now seems not too bad. Ticket to Jive support has been submitted.

[michellez]

Thank you  @kmeeusen ‌ for explaining your course and your objectives.  I think it's great that your students are succeeding at a high rate - this is also important for their own confidence. The fact that the students acknowledge how much they have learned is like earning a blue ribbon! Way to go!

[michellez]

Thank you laurakgibbs‌ for sharing this post, including the links to your course.  I am excited to incorporate Canvas into my course as well and the links are very useful to me. I know for many students the idea of school and grades can be stressful.  The last thing I want to do is increase the stress.  This thread is already providing so much help. Thanks again!

[laurakgibbs]

I hear you about the stress of grades! I've had a lot of success using growth mindset ideas to help students refocus on learning rather than letting grades be the measure of learning success. Here's how I get them started with that in the first week, and it is always so helpful to hear what they say in response to Carol Dweck's work on mindsets:

Online Course Wiki / Growth Mindset 

This is week zero of my classes, so not very many students have gotten to that assignment yet, but here is the live stream so far of their responses. As long as I keep getting thoughtful responses like this, I know it is an assignment I want to keep using! 

Online Course Wiki / Growth Mindset blog posts 

(a couple of students have already moved on to Week 2 where there are different kinds of growth mindset challenges to choose from as an "extra" option in the class; that's what the posts are about their mindset mottos)

[michellez]

Thank you laurakgibbs‌ - I am always interested in mindset growth and the power it can have for students.  These links are great!

[dhulsey]

We have also found that multiple assignments with lower stakes works well for reasons others have already stated. My department asks faculty to use a minimum of five major assignments in each course. It seems to work well for us.  

[jared]

I just want to cheer on this thread -- these are great examples of what I find to be very motivating ideas for education:

1. That small changes (in course design, teaching, or learning) can significantly impact the experience.

2. That teachers should, therefore, be iterative ("different isn't necessarily better, but better must be different").

This idea of implementing small changes is on my shortlist of topics to talk about at InstructureCon 2018 -- looking forward to hearing more examples and stories.

[laurakgibbs]

Ohhhh, that sounds great,  @jared ‌!

Maybe you can get the awesome James Lang to come speak; he did a series like that in the Chronicle:

Small Changes in Teaching

https://www.chronicle.com/specialreport/Small-Changes-in-Teaching/44 

(IMO Lang's Cheating Lessons is one of the most important books any educator can read!)

[jared]

Oh wow, how have I never heard of James Lang? Looks like I have some reading to do

[michellez]

Thank you  @jared ‌ for the comments!

[laurakgibbs]

Oh my gosh, you are in for a treat. The whole premise of Cheating Lessons is brilliant, and he has written lots of other good stuff too. Enjoy!!! 🙂

[michellez]

I want to provide an update to my original post.  Since its publication, I have provided final grades to two classes after using low-stakes assessments. I found two interesting results.  First, while many students did well, the final grades in my courses were approxiamtely 1/3 lower on average than in previous years. Second, my final papers (the final low-stakes assessment) were of a better quality than in previous years and the students earned higher grades for this assessment than in previous years when it had been worth 80%.  Students may perceive they were moderately "penalized" by the new grading system since many of the early assessments counted toward the final grades, and these early assessments earned lower grades as the students stumbled through the learning process.  I believe, however, that knowing these early assessments "counted" as part of their overall grade is what forced them to work harder on these assignments.  In return, their learning flourished and their writing skills grew. In my opinion, the slightly lower grades received overall was outweighed by the stronger work product at the end of the class. If you have any thoughts or comments, please share.

[laurakgibbs]

Thank you for reporting back,  @michellez ‌! That is really interesting!
In my classes, I don't do grading so I can't comment on the grading shift you describe, but I have definitely seen the kind of progress that you describe, especially in my students' writing. Writing is a skill that requires practice (lots of practice), and that practice is more productive when there is feedback.

Some kind of iteration is required! I definitely am a believer in "microassignments" ... and just speaking for myself, teaching creative writing, I see that the students do much better work when the grading is set aside. Here are their comments about that:

student comments re: creativity

Anatomy of an Online Course: Creativity: What Students Say 

and likewise student comments re: grading

Anatomy of an Online Course: Grading: What Students Say 

[michellez]

laurakgibbs‌ Agree, agree, agree about writing and the practice and feedback required! Thank you for sharing your students' feedback.  What positive reviews! I, too, am a fan of "microassignments" and I am continuing using them this semester for three classes.  I will keep you posted on my experience!

[laurakgibbs]

My impression from the students is that most of their classes are very much about high-stakes assignments, so that it really is up to us to keep telling people about what we are learning from this micro- approach! Having something like an LMS as opposed to a paper Gradebook is giving us so many kinds of options that just were not available/practical in the past. 🙂

[kmeeusen]

 @michellez  :

Ditto on what laurakgibbs said, and I am so happy that you did not let one term's results convince you to abandon your new approach. Student cohorts are different every term, that and your own newness to your new system likely contributed to the lower actual grades. As you run this out for a few terms and make your own micro-adjustments I suspect you will actually see grade improvements as well. Heck, it may even be that the grade drop  might be the result of increased rigor at some point, and that is not a bad thing. Way too early to tell though.

What I really liked to hear was your obvious mention of transparency in your grading system when you said,

"I believe, however, that knowing these early assessments "counted" as part of their overall grade is what forced them to work harder on these assignments."

I am constantly amazed, dumb-founded and disheartened when I read posts in this Community about complex grading schemes that nobody but the poster could ever understand, or who are asking for ways to hide features and functions related to grades from their students. I think that one of the keys to a truly effective constructive curriculum alignment is that the learners understand the structure of that alignment and how their achievement of learning outcomes will be graded.

Great job, and I can't wait to hear more!

Kelley

[kmeeusen]

laurakgibbs‌

I believe the same thing, and this dependence on high-stakes assessments is to me actually detrimental to student engagement in the learning process.

I am a keynote speaker for a state college system's (not my own) annual  online conference next week - the conference theme is assessment, and I will make several points about the use of many, varied, low-stakes assessments that are both formative and summative (although in a well designed course there really is no difference) instead of one or a few high-stakes assessments.  I am actually talking about an assessment strategy as a student engagement tool.

I'l be interested to hear the reactions of my audience.

I do recognize that in many professional and technical programs, a high-stakes assessment is required by certification agencies, but I also will speak about how to manage that without disengaging your students and providing great opportunities for the students to do well.

Kelley

[laurakgibbs]

GO, KELLEY!  @kmeeusen ‌

That sounds wonderful. My impression is that many faculty would like to maybe experiment with different approaches but they are just scared to do something that seems new or weird, or that might get pushback from students, and so on. I am convinced that all of those fears can actually be turned to productive, proactive strategies... but it's really important to talk them through and explain things in detail. How great that you are getting a chance to talk with an audience like that!

And I hear you about complicated grading schemes; I don't even chime in on most of those discussions here at Canvas because people with complex schemes are usually committed to them for some reason, and not likely to be thinking about alternatives.

My guess, though, is that there are lots of people using a traditional grading scheme just because it is traditional and for no other reason. And they might even realize how the grading is not really helping with the learning... and even inhibiting it.

My system is very simple. I use this "progress chart" so that any time during the semester students can see what they are on track for, and they can adjust as needed. It's kind of like that "what-if" feature in Canvas; it basically shows "what if I keep doing what I've been doing so far" ... and if they are happy with that, they are good to go! Or they can do more if they want/need a boost.

Here's the chart:

Online Course Wiki / Chart 

I am so pleased that I never get questions from students about grades. Just about the work. 🙂

[michellez]

Thank you  @kmeeusen ‌ - the support from you and from others on this thread has been wonderful.  I love teaching and I especially love when my students who start out as beginners, finally "get it" and become masters. Thanks again for your comments!

[kmeeusen]

Hi  @michellez ‌

I know what you mean. When they finally get both the value of learning (and that it is a life long pursuit) and how to guide their own learning makes me happier than what ever other little things they learned from my curriculum

Rock on, Michelle!

[jared]

This is fascinating:

Michelle Zakarin wrote:

First, while many students did well, the final grades in my courses were approxiamtely 1/3 lower on average than in previous years. Second, my final papers (the final low-stakes assessment) were of a better quality than in previous years and the students earned higher grades for this assessment than in previous years when it had been worth 80%.  

As Laura and Kelley have suggested, there could be many reasons for the lower grade -- calculation differences, cohort differences. Another idea is that multiple assessments may a better job measuring students' actual learning, or measuring learning on more topics, or to a deeper level, and the final grades are a more accurate depiction of overall learning.

That's perhaps not an inspirational thought   -- anecdotally, I've seen students perceive active learning as more work / more difficult than more passive learning. But that's the point, since the greater the mental effort the more the learning sticks.

This also reminds me of how Eric Mazur understood active learning to be both a more accurate representation of student learning ...:

“The students did well on textbook-style problems,” [Mazur] explains. “They had a bag of tricks, formulas to apply. But that was solving problems by rote. They floundered on the simple word problems, which demanded a real understanding of the concepts behind the formulas.”

Some soul-searching followed. “That was a very discouraging moment,” he says. “Was I not such a good teacher after all? Maybe I have dumb students in my class. There’s something wrong with the test—it’s a trick test! How hard it is to accept that the blame lies with yourself.

...

"We have to train people to tackle situations they have not encountered before. Most instructors avoid this like the plague, because the students dislike it. Even at Harvard, we tend to keep students in their comfort zone. The first step in developing those skills is stepping into unknown territory.

“It’s not easy. You get a lot of student resistance,” he continues. “You should see some of the vitriolic e-mails I get. The generic complaint is that they have to do all the learning themselves. Rather than lecturing, I’m making them prepare themselves for class—and in class, rather than telling them things, I’m asking them questions. They’d much rather sit there and listen and take notes."

What's seems clear is that despite the lower grades in the "experimental" semester, you're doing a better job helping students achieve a desired outcome: "high quality writing".

[michellez]

Thank you for your comments  @jared ‌. This support is welcome and appreciated.  I am currently in my second semester using the multiple lower-stakes assessments, with some tweaks on point allotment, and I look forward to sharing those results as well. Thank you again for your insight! #low stakes‌ #assessment‌

[mtaylor8]

Michelle, First, I want to applaud your willingness to try a different approach.  I would really like to wean students off of their previous training (grade only goals), and bring back the joy of learning and mastery of skills.  My field is IT, highly technical, and certifications (for good or bad) are perceived as useful when it comes to dressing up a resume.  The certifications are really difficult.  Even trying to re-certify an expired one can be difficult. As a result, there is considerable rote memorization just to get terminology down, not just to pass, but so that we can have an intelligent discussion in class.  Labs are voluminous, but they lead to new skills.  Both the memorization and the labs have their place the Bloom's taxonony, and both need to be validated through assessments.

What we have changed so far is to add low stakes assessments in the form of practice labs and challenge labs.  We also reduced the weight of multiple choice tests, necessary though they may be.

The anecdotal result is as follows, and it is more of an observation than a study. 

• The strong students are stronger.  They dig in and dig deep.  They do the labs, they study the why.  They don't just challenge themselves, they are challenging me, which is fun.  They don't worry about their own grades/grade weights because they do more than is required.  Occasionally there will be one that is so focused on the learning that they neglect to submit gradable work.  Regardless, they will be stunning employees.
• The mid level students study the grade weights and figure out how to get a good grade with reasonable effort.  Most will be ok in the end, but maybe not stellar.  And some of them will have breakthroughs to become stunning.
• However, the lower performing students have fallen off the cliff into a grading safety net.  Previously, they would have hit bottom and quit school.  They have figured out that they can make a high grade with minimal attendance/attention to class.  With a minimalist conscience, they can derive/wordsmith answers to the lab questions  by asking other students or going to coursehero.com for 'hints'.    In essence, they come out of the experience with about the same level of 'work readiness' as when they started school.  They may even be worse off since cheating is their most improved skill set.

IHMO we are not doing this last group any favors.  They will have debt to pay back and are laboring under the illusion that a degree is the ticket to their dreams.  The stunning students expressly resent students who manipulate to receive similar grades with a wide gulf of effort. These low performers also threaten the reputation of the school with employers, and thus the college's future sustainability.  I wonder if these student will still need a different, and perhaps more strongly structured grading lattice.   However, ethically, we can't pre-judge or grade students...differently.

Any ideas?

PS. Unfortunately, the Canvas testing engine is a bit behind the need.  Just had to get that jab in there.

[mtaylor8]

Kelly,

I think your student's need for detailed mastery content may be similar to mine.  I replied with some concerns in another post to this thread.  I would be interested in your thoughts.

Thanks,

Michael Taylor

[kmeeusen]

I too struggle with my low-performing students,  @mtaylor8 

Many, as a percentage, simply fall off the grid and disappear from my rosters early in the term. For me, this is unfortunate because I have the common teacher's disease of wanting them to succeed. However, a part of me understands, even if our system does not, that some folks will never succeed, or at least not during our time interacting with them. As you noted between the lines, I also am concerned about those marginal students who work the system enough to obtain their degree or certification, and what will happen with them in the employment arena - the Romans are going to feed them to the lions, and their careers will consist mostly of filling out job applications.

In light of that, I do not lose much sleep. I don't mean that I am totally cavalier of my losses, but I design my courses so that all of my students can learn who want to learn and try to learn (within biological /cognitive limits - and boy are the K-12 teachers in the room going to hate that statement) , and maintain a very rigorous curriculum. By doing that, I know that the ones who succeed in my course, have met the learning outcomes of my course.

My combined assessment weight in my courses is 80%, with my final cumulative exam weighted at 10% of their grade. Individually, none of my assessments would count as "high-stakes", but cumulatively they are very high!

My term just ended last night, and this was an Inbox message from one of my students that I found this morning,

"Did anyone get a crappy grade (on Final)? I only ask because this course was so well put together! I would for sure take another class from you! Thanks teach"

As you can guess, that made me smile. So I checked, and here are my stats.......................

• Enrollments at start of term: 25
• Enrollments at end of term: 19 (the six dropped fairly early, but they still broke my heart, because from what little I knew of them from their autobiography postings, I believe they had the necessary cognitive ability to pass my course. Life, support, motivation, persistence, - I just don't know, but I still care.
• Number completing Final Exam: 18. I knew that one student was iffy, and I worked hard with her, but her work and study habits clearly did not meet the test of time. Again; life, support, motivation, persistence, - I just don't know, but I still care.
• Number Passing the Final Exam: 18 everyone who attempted it!
• Number passing the course: 18
• Percent passed with an A: 14 or 77.8%

Now I consider this to be poor statistics, and historically they are for my courses - and primarily because of the abysmal numbers of dropped. And yet again; life, support, motivation, persistence, - I just don't know, but I still care.

I teach an entry-level course required by all of the health career programs on my two campuses. I annually get feedback from the Chairs for those programs, and they are consistently pleased with the skills of the students coming out of my course. Those skills are, I assume and hope, reinforced through their subsequent academic careers, which should reflect well in their industry careers.

I won't lose too much sleep, but I still ask myself what more I could do in the first couple weeks each term to retain more of my students. Maybe nothing, as our CTC system accept sall comers, so perhaps they were just not adequately prepared; or as I have already stated too many times; life, support, motivation, persistence, - I just don't know, but I still care.

Kelley

[laurakgibbs]

Thanks so much for sharing your story,  @kmeeusen ‌! I teach mostly graduating seniors, so I really want to see them graduate my class: after 4 or 5 or 6 years of investing in their bachelor's degree, it would really be wrong for them to not finish up.

Are there people in my classes who have, objectively speaking, massive writing deficiencies? Yes, there are. And have they had the opportunity to get support for the kind of intensive practice (with feedback) that it will take for them to improve their writing? No, they have not. I fail students in my class who disappear and don't do the work. If a student shows up and does the work, their writing always improves. Is it "college-level writing" by the end of the semester? Not necessarily. But I have students in my classes who would need more than one semester to reach college level; that's how badly writing has been neglected in their education. I grade those students for effort and improvement, not on an objective measure of their writing skills (and objective writing measures are always highly arbitrary anyway...).

Writing is extremely difficult, and given the content-coverage focus of most college classes, students are not getting the help with their writing that they need. (Not to mention that few faculty have any training in writing instruction, etc. etc.) To improve their writing, they definitely need shorter, low-stakes, iterative assignments where writing is the focus (not writing-as-proxy-for-content-knowledge-testing).

Side remark: I am not persuaded that plagiarism is the problem we should be focusing on (that TurnItin discussion is still ongoing here at the Community today). The problem we should be focusing on, IMO, is poor writing skills. And if we worked on helping students to become strong, confident writers, I think most of the plagiarism problems would be solved as an added bonus. 🙂

[michellez]

Thank you  @mtaylor ‌ for this thoughtful response.  At my institution, I, along with many of my colleagues, have noticed similar results with the strong, mid-level and lower-performing students.  I think this is common.  We have struggled with the ethics as you describe - taking money for a degree they may never use vs. giving them a chance to be in a profession where they believe they belong.  It is not easy and unfortunately, we have not made much progress with answers.  The lower-stakes assessments, however, seem to be useful for the mid-level and lower-performing students, especially compared with past years where those students tended to do little or no work but had a grade entirely dependent on one assessment.  This new way, I believe, forces them, or at least gives them a push, to start their assignments early because they know they will have assignments due.  This push, again, I believe, provides the ones in these lower categories with a big opportunity to show us (and more importantly - themselves!) that they do have what it takes to succeed in graduate school.  Again, thanks so much for sharing your experience! 

[mtaylor8]

Thanks Michelle.  If we were to find out that our experience with low performers is common (I smell a PhD dissertation with bell curves), then the solution is not likely to be easy.   For example, in many, if not most cases, the lower performers are actually smart enough to be successful, even if through deterministic grit.  However, they are untrained; untrained at learning, untrained at managing personal affairs, resistant to change.  Those who have not been in their shoes can hardly blame them.  They spent a good part of their formative years having insults and punishment hurled at them for being 'stupid' when they tried, but something went wrong.  It is not exactly the kind of beginning that encourages embracing change.

I teach in the AS/BS degrees, mostly 200 level classes.  The freshman honeymoon is over. I get them just as the going gets tough.  The technical details start accumulating massively and the immersion into new learning territory is like stepping into a minefield at night vs resting at the barracks. I have wondered at the strategic changes I can make to incite more perseverance.  Part of what I have tried is to change how assessments are done by rebuilding the difficulty level to provide some initial successes.   While this can be helpful,  the downside of this is that many lower performers sometimes see this initial 'ease' as indicative of the continued level of commitment.  I.e, they slack off.  Thus they underestimate the learning curve ahead and fail anyway.  That is my conundrum.

As a side note: In the book 'Disrupting Class', author Dr. Clayton Christensen refers to the need of individuals to learn at their own pace, which is exactly the opposite of modern education classroom.  Are we missing something?  Something huge?  If we accept this, aren't we really saying that while Course Design may still be important , 'Class Design' is less of an issue, because large classes are less relevant to the individual learner?  I have long known that most of the good that I will accomplish in this life will be done one on one. Perhaps there is a new model that can evolve that will foster this without bankrupting society or the individuals in it.

[laurakgibbs]

For me, weaving "growth mindset" ideas into every aspect of the class has been the most helpful... especially for students who think of themselves as failures either in school generally or in terms of their writing, growth  mindset gives them a new way to look at the learning process and at their mistakes. It has been incredibly helpful for me in working with all students, but esp. those students who are struggling.

[kmeeusen]

Hi laurakgibbs‌:

One of the colleges I teach for embarked on an interesting initiative quite a few years back that I helped with when I was full-time faculty there. That initiative was to incorporate and integrate writing skills into our professional/technical courses and programs. Towards that purpose we asked our English Department to draft us an appropriate writing rubric we could use to grade writing assignments for writing fundamentals.

This was an incredibly challenging project, and much more challenging than it should have been, and primarily this was due to our English faculty. It took them well more than a year to collaboratively develop the rubric, and what they delivered was several pages long. It read more like an extensive list of learning outcomes for Eng 101, rather than the tool we need to encourage better writing skills and grade the application of those skills to the technical writings of our students.

I doubt if any prof/tech faculty even use it any more, and those of us who originally used it, carved it down to something more realistic and manageable.

This was a sad missed opportunity to promote college level writing at that school!

Kelley

[laurakgibbs]

Eeegad,  @kmeeusen ‌, I hear you! I'm not a fan of rubrics in any case... but if I were to do rubrics, then I would want the STUDENTS to design the rubric. The approach I take right now is to get them to choose a specific writing topic challenge each revision week, in addition to making use of the feedback they get from me and from other students. By giving them this list of challenges, I hope to get them to see the incredibly complex nature of writing (so many dimensions!), while also encouraging them to tackle things one step at a time. You can't work on everything at the same time (or else you get a monster rubric like the one you describe). Here's my current list of writing challenges, and I get new ideas from the students every semester to add on to the list:

Grow Your Writing: Revision Challenges 

It's a simple thing, but HUGE in terms of all the messages I am trying to convey to the students with this approach in which they are the ones in charge of their writing growth; I am just here to help if I can.

🙂

[mtaylor8]

Laura, I buy into the growth mindset conceptually.  And, for me, failure is my most effective(albeit costly) platform for learning.  I have rarely done any relatively complex procedure right the first time. Do it, correct it, do it, correct it. I don't think I am alone. Example: I would not trade my wife of 4 decades for anyone, and not just because she is amazing. As I recall, the first year (blissful as it was), had a learning curve. It took years for us to act as a team with complimentary skills, an ongoing commitment with rich dividends. It was and continues to be, iterative learning, for both of us. Moments of frustration/failure happen.  But the learning/adaptation never ends, because we are both still changing. OJT.

Alternatively, the academic reality is that letter grades are mandated based on traditional measures (A-F with some + or - deviation) resulting in quality points/GPA.  The cutoffs are rather arbitrary.  For teachers there is unintended encouragement to assessment manipulation to ensure acceptable course passing rates.  As evidence, consider how many of the most popular faculty give out lots of A's.  Yet, I think students today are realizing how contrived and frustrating the grading model is. There is no question that proficiency standards must exist, and most employers are grateful for the ones that mean something.  Yet, why should someone repeat a whole course if they are rock solid on even 50% of it?    If someone can produce beautifully organized documents, albeit with poor citations and grievous spelling, should they repeat the whole course, or just learn how to use spell checker and correct citations?

This is the age in which software can be produced that allows for very individualized micro-learning paths. Teachers can act as learning coaches along the academic obstacle course.  Yet, we continue to build classrooms to hold the masses and thus pretending they will all absorb learning at the same time and at robotic levels of mastery.  'Good is the enemy of great'. We pat ourselves on the back because our pass rate is high.  Likewise when our attendance rate is high (as if we have total control of that).  Neither of those are fully valid measures of success. Conversely, they may be contributing to a false positive at a tremendous cost.

That was a long way of saying, I wish we could do it without grades and just focus on high standards of proficiency.  At the same time, the system has evolved to be what it is for a reason.  There is no guarantee that if/when we move to something different, we don't end up back where we are. 

[laurakgibbs]

 @mtaylor8 ‌ Getting rid of grades is a big part of growth mindset... and I don't do grades. Only feedback. The students do the grading, and it's based on completion. It works for me, and it has worked for me for 15 years. I feel very lucky that I can work in an environment that lets me focus on feedback like this. And the students work hard in my classes... but it's because of the course design itself, not the carrot-and-stick of ABCDF grades on their assignments.

I've written a lot about how I do this: 

http://Grading.MythFolklore.net

And here is what the students say:

Un-Grading: What Students Say 

You can find lots of other alternatives by following the #TTOG hashtag (teachers throwing out grades) at Twitter.

We're a movement. A small movement. But all movements start small, right? 🙂

#ttog - Twitter Search 

[mtaylor8]

Thanks, and I will tell you what I am going to do.  I will go through a good number of the links on the site you sent...info gathering.   

What I am looking for: As much fun as it would be, I don't teach on the more 'creative' side of the coin, and am more focused on highly 'technical' standards and procedures with extremely exacting minutia.  But let me use a cross learning example.  If students want to learn web design because they like to create pretty, colorful, user friendly experiences for visitors, that is inherently a creative outcome.  Yet, it has a number of highly particular and very specific inputs that can be super frustrating.  In the student's head, the 2000 piece puzzle is already assembled.  Yet, they have no clue where to start.  However, even with that challenge, those that really want to learn, do.

The teaching of IT is much less creative than even that.  The end outcome is that stuff just works. The job for computer network technicians is about making stuff work, every time, all the time.  And the outcome is like a neuro-surgery, where the smallest misstep is not going to end well.  The amount of information to get a student to the point of proficiency to even talk about IT related terminology is daunting.   Where I am headed with this, is that, as an instructor on the subject, I need to know what my audience knows, and more importantly, what they don't know.   How do I do that to a group of them without embarrassing someone, unless I use a test?   And how does a test tell me what they don't know if it is not graded?   I don't care much for grading, the A-F delineations, or the arbitrary cutoff at 65, but I don't have any choice but to care about what they do not understand.  So, that is where my challenge lies.

[laurakgibbs]

Actually writing has a lot in common with the process you describe: writing is also a multidimensional experience, and getting to the end point of "what works" is a really long and difficult process for many students. There are also serious terminology problems involved even in trying to explain to students what is going wrong and the choices available to them to fix it.

By reading their writing, word by word, sentence by sentence, and giving them feedback on that every week, I get a good sense of what each students knows, and I try to build on what they do know and can do well, while also alerting them to the writing areas in which they are weak and need work. Often they have so many deficit areas that it is kind of overwhelming, which is why I get them to focus on one area at a time since trying to fix all of it all at once is just going to lead to more frustration.

Many of the leaders in growth mindset / TTOG education are actually math teachers, so it's not about leaving room for creativity (even though that is very important to me as a writing teacher). So if/when you have time, definitely poke around in that world; you might find the math teachers to be some of the most congenial in terms of tackling problems similar to the ones you face! 🙂