Episodes
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134 – (Replay) Exploring Alt Grading in Physical Education (in more detail) with Josh Ogilvie
Due to unexpected technical difficulties we were unable to record a new episode for this week. We will be back with new episodes next week! In the meantime, please enjoy this incredible conversation and deep conversation about alt grading in Physical Education, including the details! Join us as Sharona and Bosley talk about alt grading…
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133 – To Display (Grades) or Not To Display (Grades) – That is the Question!
In this episode of The Grading Podcast, Boz and Sharona dig into a 2025 longitudinal study that tackles a surprisingly practical question: should we show students the numeric grade on an assignment, or give feedback without displaying the score? Using a well-controlled design, the research tracks both academic performance and emotional responses as grades are…
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132 – New Semester, New Grading: Building Trust Before Content
A new semester is days away—and Sharona is stepping back into teaching precalculus for the first time in about a decade, this time with today’s alternative grading practices (and one big new twist). Before the “math content” really ramps up, Sharona and Boz make the case for spending serious time up front on what actually…
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131 – Why Now? The Urgency of Grading Reform in an AI-Saturated Era
Grading reform has been a decades-long effort—but in this episode, Sharona and Boz argue that it’s now urgent. They explore what’s changed: post-pandemic student disengagement and distrust that grades reflect real learning, the way AI has shifted the conversation from “cheating” to “purpose,” and growing institutional pressure to demonstrate educational value. They frame grading as…
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129 – (Replay) The Results are IN! Traditional Grading and Alternative Grading Went HEAD TO HEAD!!! What happened?
Happy New Year! We are taking a small break this week from releasing new episodes, so please enjoy our most popular episode from 2025. We’ll be back next week with a brand new episode! In this episode, Sharona and Bosley share some of the top line results of a direct comparison between traditional grading and…
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128 – (Replay)Visionary Leadership: Culture Change through Asking Questions – A 10-Year Journey to Building-Wide Grading Reform
Happy Holidays! We’re taking the week off from recording, so enjoy this replay about visionary leadership!! In this episode, Sharona and Boz interview Doug Wilson, principal of Avondale High School in Michigan, about his advice on implementing building-wide grading reform. This discussion touches on ways of being a visionary leader, how to move towards culture…
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127 – An LMS Designed from the Ground Up for Alt Grading? Tell Me More! With Stephanie Valentine
Dr. Stephanie Valentine (University of Nebraska–Lincoln) joins Sharona and Boz to tell the origin story behind TeachFront—a grading-and-feedback platform she and her students built after getting buried in spreadsheets trying to make standards-based / ungrading-style systems work at scale. They dig into what shifted when grades stopped being “points to litigate” and became feedback for…
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126 – AI-Aware Teaching, Mastery Quizzes, and the Future of Grading with Derek Bruff
What happens to grading when AI can do so much of what we’ve traditionally asked students to do by hand? In this episode, Boz and Sharona talk with educator, author, and podcaster Derek Bruff about his three-stage journey into mastery-based assessment, from early test corrections to coordinated mastery quizzes to rebuilding exams in a cryptography…
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125 – Five Steps to Redesign Your Course in the Age of AI
In this episode, Boz and Sharona take on a big question: What should we be doing to our courses, right now, in an AI-saturated world—without losing the human relationships that actually keep students in school? Sharona shares her own urgency as she prepares to return to teaching precalculus for the first time in a decade,…
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124 – Extinguishing the Fires in Grading Reform (Replay)
Happy Thanksgiving! We’re on a break this week so enjoy this replay of episode 46! On this episode we welcome back the “sportscaster” of Alternative Grading, Dr. Matt Townsley, to talk about his new book Extinguishing the Fires within Assessment and Grading Reform. As Alternative Grading practices grow and take shape throughout the United States,…