The Grading Podcast

Sharona: Or biggest things that I’ve learned switching to alternative grading is in traditional grading, we have these categories that are based on time, place, and manner. So they’re either a proctored exam or they’re a portfolio work that’s done at home. They have these names in our grade books like exams, final exam, quizzes, homework.

None of that though actually identifies this object as to where it falls in learning. And so we don’t use any of those language. My preference is to not identify things by time, place, and manner, but to identify something by intent. What is the intent of this thing in your grading architecture?

Bosley: Welcome to the Grading podcast, where we’ll take a critical lens to the methods of assessing students’ learning from traditional grading to alternative methods of grading. We’ll look at how grades impact our classrooms and our students’ success. I’m Robert Bosley, a high school math teacher, instructional coach, intervention specialist, and instructional designer in the Los Angeles Unified School District and with Cal State LA.

Sharona: And I’m Sharona Krinsky, a math instructor at Cal State Los Angeles, faculty coach, and instructional designer. Whether you work in higher ed or K 12, whatever your discipline is, whether you are a teacher, a coach, or an administrator, this podcast is for you. Each week you will get the practical, detailed information you need to be able to actually implement effective grading practices in your class and at your institution.

Bosley: Hello and welcome back to the podcast. I’m Robert Bosley, one of your two co-hosts, and with me as always, your other co-host, Sharona Krinsky. How you doing today, Sharona?

Sharona: Good, good. We just finished the second week, I think, of the semester and settling in and..

Bosley: Just yeah, how is it settling in after having the weird kind of, you know, you were going to be on strike all week and then it was only one day, like, were the students responding and coming back? Has your attendance been really wacky?

Sharona: The attendance has been up and down. The first week, lots of absences because many of our students work full time. We’re definitely a university where they go to school full time, work full time. So they set their work schedules for the whole week once they were told,

Bosley: yeah, expecting that you, there was going to be no classes.

Sharona: Exactly. And some of them reached out and said, are you sure there’s going to be no classes? I have to tell work and we’re like, yes, there’s no classes. And then it got canceled. So we just didn’t hold that against them. We didn’t check it. But then even in the second week, still having some attendance issues.

And just some weird things happening with students being like, Oh yeah, I signed up for this class, but I can’t actually attend. It’s too far away. So, but we’ll talk about that more.

Bosley: Yeah. But that, yeah, this has got to be, I would imagine one of your more weird starts to a semester.

Sharona: Definitely strange. Definitely strange. How’s your week been?

Bosley: One of my roles at my high school world is, even though I’m not the testing coordinator for any of our big tests, I always end up being the right hand person for the testing coordinator.

So basically this whole week, we’ve been doing this new district mandated test, which I do not like at all and basically spent my entire week this last week trying to hit our district mandated completion rate. Which we came close but still didn’t hit and just mentally and physically exhausting week. I was averaging like 13 to 15, 000 steps a day trying to find students to get to do these makeup tests.

So not my favorite role in my high school job.

Sharona: Well, and it’s interesting because I talk to you and I do hear that this is what’s going on in your world. So you often agree to sit down and record this, like we’re recording now on a Saturday morning. So I appreciate you joining and the fact that doing this and talking about this is more fun than what you’ve been doing at school all week is interesting.

Bosley: Well, I mean, anything short of a root canal is more fun than what I was doing this week.

Sharona: Okay, but this you really enjoy more, I think.

Bosley: Yes, yes, this part, anytime I get to talk about any kind of grading reform or alternative grading, it definitely makes me happy.

Sharona: So speaking of talking about that, now I’m going to ask you the question, what are we going to be talking about this episode?

Bosley: So this episode, we’re going to be talking about a couple of different things that seem to come up either as questions or misconceptions when I’m working with new practitioners, and for some reason, especially in my K 12 world. So I’ve got a new group that I’m starting to work with in my high school setting, and this has already come up.

So really what we’re going to be looking at is the role of all of the work we do, or all the work the students do, and how some work is different than others. And this idea of due dates and late work. Those kind of go hand in hand. And again, a lot of misconceptions. When we’re talking about, especially that fourth pillar, about eventual mastery is what matters, and what does that mean for late work?

Sharona: Well and when we do our trainings, we talk about how we do this in our class, and it’s this one little piece of our entire grading architecture that is the thing that almost people want to know the most. Even though we’ve sort of corralled it into this small part of the grading architecture, I think we need to define what we’re talking about here.

And for me it’s actually the bulk of what students experience in a class. So in our class, we have broken it into three things. Students might prepare for class in some way. They could have to do a reading that’s due before class in an English class. They might be reading a novel something like that.

They have to do something to prepare to come to class. Then there’s this expectation that in class they often participate. Sometimes they don’t, sometimes it’s more of a lecture style class, especially in higher ed, but there’s some form where they could participate in class. And then they go home and they practice. And then at some point, we’re going to check their proficiency on those learning outcomes on that first pillar.

Would you agree with that?

Bosley: Yeah, and what we’re really going to be focusing on today is all that stuff that students do that isn’t us checking for proficiency. It’s all the stuff that’s really designed to build the students’ levels of proficiency up to what we’re looking for. So we’re not going to be talking about the things that we use to check the students level of proficiency.

This conversation is about all that other stuff. And, and this is personal opinion, but I think this is one of the biggest mistakes I see, in especially my K 12 settings, is people want to grade those on proficiency scales. And I’m like, no, part of the idea of alternative grading, especially that’s based in growth mindset, is we value mistakes.

We want mistakes. We want our students to learn and grow from those mistakes, but that means we shouldn’t be punishing for those mistakes. And I think that’s one of the biggest things that, again, especially new practitioners end up making mistakes that hurt them. And that is they try to grade everything on these proficiency scales.

No. And again, this is my opinion, you might agree or disagree Sharona, and some of our other practitioners that might be listening might be yelling at whatever they’re listening to when they hear this, but I don’t think any of the stuff that’s meant to build towards proficiency should be graded on a proficiency scale.

And I personally, if they did it, they get credit for it. Yes, I still give feedback and stuff, but yeah.

Sharona: Right. So that’s where a lot of people hear us say that. And then we immediately get to the second misconception about this exact thing. So people hear "don’t grade it on a proficiency scale" to mean "don’t grade it at all". Or, and by grade I mean mark it as whatever, or they hear, give them credit for cruddy work, for work that is not good. So those are the two extremes. Grade everything for proficiency or don’t mark it at all. That’s what people hear. And there’s a problem with not marking it at all.

Now, some of our, this is where our burn it down folks are. Now the different group is now yelling at me. You can’t mark everything. You shouldn’t mark everything. Marks hurt learning. And there’s research out there to say that when you mark something as complete or not complete, or as acceptable, the minute you do that, the learning stops.

So I don’t think we’re talking about either extreme. We personally land somewhere in the middle. And that’s why I want to break it down a little bit more. And this was inspired in part because I did have a student this week who messaged me, who’s not been able to attend class. And this student does not understand my grading architecture because they haven’t been able to attend, but they thought they were doing the right things by doing the things that were due, "due", in my syllabus and when I told them that wasn’t going to be enough, the student got quite upset.

So how do we balance all these things? How do we balance the reality is the bulk of the time a student is engaging with a class they’re not at proficiency, and they’re not trying to show proficiency. I mean, probably 90 plus percent of the time involved in a course between preparation, participation, practice, coming to class, doing assignments, those things.

The bulk of that time, it’s like 90 percent of the time, now I’m saying, wait, that doesn’t really count. So,

Bosley: Well, it’s not that it doesn’t count, it’s all of that stuff is what’s building the students learning and building towards that proficiency level. That the then 10 percent of "the assignments" that are assessments that make up our grade is based off of. It’s not that it’s a waste of time, it’s the purpose of all of those other things is to build the students learning. I mean, that’s where the learning is coming in.

Sharona: Right. But the students have spent years and years and years where everything they do is given some point value and therefore "counts". So maybe we should dive in a little bit more to what we do first with the way we handle this and then talk a little bit more about some of the other ways we’ve seen it handled.

Bosley: Okay. That sounds good.

Sharona: So we actually, I think we talked about this on another episode. We actually wrote a learning outcome that covers some of this stuff. We call it our Preparation, Participation, and Practice Learning Outcome.

Bosley: Or the Triple P.

Sharona: Or the Triple P. But the idea here, or we also call it Habits of Mind, we’ve got a lot of different names for it, but the idea is, one of the things the students are supposed to learn in most classes, is how to learn that material.

And we believe that the way that you learn something is some combination of preparing for class, participating in class, and practicing.

Bosley: Now, you say some combination, that’s because that combination might be very different between different students. Not all students learn or need the same amount of all three of these three categories that you just named.

Sharona: Exactly. And there are also some classes where I’ve altered that a little bit. And so, for example, in my History of Math class, the bulk of the class, the value of the class, isn’t even, to be honest, their proficiency in certain things, as much as it is the process of contributing to the creation of the class.

So I’ve actually altered this triple P a little bit to lean a little bit more heavily into now creating a learning community. So if they show up and engage, that’s actually quite valuable.

Bosley: Yeah. And again, why? Because the purpose of that class compared to the purpose of our statistics class or one of my high school classes is very different.

And again, here’s where alternative grading really allows you to customize your gradings architect and grading schemes to fit the purpose of your class.

Sharona: So, I’ve seen two main ways that these things are added into the grading architecture. One is the way we do it. We wrote a learning outcome, and then we decided that our proficiency scale, so to speak, is do enough stuff.

It’s a quantity thing. So, it’s not on a typical two-point, three-point, it’s not using a proficiency scale. We just said assemble enough stuff. We essentially almost took our inspiration from video games and gamification, where everything that falls into this bucket of this learning outcome has some point value. Some things are higher point value, some things are lower point value, just because we think that they’re more worth doing, but students don’t get graded or checked for this based on a percentage.

Bosley: It doesn’t matter what combination of prep, participation, and practice that they do. It’s whatever combination works for them. So if I’m someone that finds doing the prep work is really useful and not as much the practice, I can still accumulate those enough points without doing much of the practice .

Sharona: It’s very hard to get it with leaving one of those categories completely out, but at least if you do at least a little in all of it, it’s pretty easy to get.

Bosley: And why, why is that? Why is it that it is mathematically possible, but very difficult, to completely leave one of those three categories out and still get the learning target?

Sharona: So my theory, when this was designed, Is that students, again, this is a freshman class, intro GE. Most students don’t yet know how they learn. They don’t understand what is helping them learn. So I want them to..

Bosley: There’s actually, there’s actually a lot of research out there that shows that too. There’s a couple of Harvard studies and I think a few others that show that humans are actually not good at judging how we learn.

Sharona: And also the things in these categories vary as well. So preparing for class could mean doing prep work in the form of videos, but it could mean doing it in terms of reading, it could mean participating in a discussion board. So there’s different things within it, and even like on the practice side, we have some practice problems that are directly aligned. They’re basically practice checkpoints. So if students do those, those are directly aligned to the quizzes that we use to check for proficiency. And then other things are a little bit easier, they’re a little bit more designed to solidify basic definitions and participation.

Bosley: Or focused, or focused on one component of the learning target. Like maybe a specific math skill or a specific part of that learning target, not the entire learning target like the big practice problems are.

So you were saying, you know earlier I asked you why, if we think and we know that students learn in different ways, why is it that we have it set up to where it is nearly impossible to completely leave one out. And you kind of hinted at it when you were saying, we’re not usually good judges, especially as a freshman in college, we’re not great judges at how we actually learn. So I know what I do, and I know you do the same and you actually encourage all of our instructors because this is a coordinated course, and that is we encourage students at the very beginning do some of everything do some of it for the first couple of weeks at least, or first two standards, the first two learning targets. Do at least some of all of it, find what helps you the most.

And then after that, focus on that and what helps you the least, don’t spend as much time on it, if any. But that gives, that has a little bit of points to where after those first couple of units, if I’ve realized, okay, the practice is what really helps me and the prep doesn’t really do much, I can stop doing most of the prep and I’ve gotten enough points.

Bosley: See, and I think that, at least in my experience with my students, those students break into two categories. One category is the students that have realized and really do value those assignments and understand that, Hey, this is helping me to where I’m getting my proficiency scores early and I’m not having to do as many of the reassessments.

So they’re really finding the value of it. And then the other category is the students that typically get the A’s in the traditional and they’re just used to doing everything and it’s like so programmed that they can’t not do everything. And those are the ones that I also feel like they get a little bit burned out towards the end.

Sharona: Well, and the nice thing about this as well, is although we have the pot of points set at whatever it’s set at, it doesn’t have to stay there. So if we have a student who is not doing enough early in the semester and they get to the end of the semester and they’re at 600 points.

I can throw a massive reflection assignment at them, I can assign them several more practice problems. It doesn’t matter when they’re getting these points. The point is, we are talking to them in a language they sort of understand about what’s important. And that’s why we have different point values on different things.

Again, I don’t do this with seniors. With my seniors, I do it very differently. But with this class, this freshman class, I’m doing it. And I’m communicating to them, I’m starting to translate this language of points that they understand and leverage it to my own benefit.

Bosley: Yeah.

Sharona: So then I do want to talk about the other main way I’ve seen it because I think this is a way a lot of our STEM faculty in particular will understand.

Bosley: Okay.

So some people will say to get the grade you want, you have to have 65 percent or 70 percent of all the homework points. But what they do is they set those homeworks to check for accuracy, but to be infinitely repeatable. So students can work on the homework in an auto graded system and keep trying until the student gets it to a level where they’re happy with.

Bosley: Yeah.

Sharona: So I, and I told the story, I think, on an episode earlier, my son had this situation. It was not a alternatively graded class. But in his physics class, he had a situation where he could just keep repeating the problem until he got it right. He gave up on one problem after eight tries. I finally got it right after 42. So, what do we do? So it’s another way to check it, though.

And although I don’t love percentages overall, the fact that you can repeat this with no penalty, and get it up to the highest level, that you can at least alleviates most of the challenges that we’ve talked about. Because it’s not an average, it’s just a percentage complete, percentage correct.

Bosley: Yeah, and I kind of see what you’re saying, and I internally still have a struggle with that. Because what happens if you have a student that is able to get all of the proficiency assessments, but for whatever reason, still isn’t making this homework completion. Because that was me as a student. Really, until I got past calc two, I never needed to do homework in math.

Now, once I got past calc two, absolutely, oh my God my abstract algebra class? Oh yeah. But up until that point. I never, homework was just a burden that I did because I had to for my grade. So I still have some internal issues, but at the same time, I do something similar last time I taught algebra two in the high school. I took some of those learning targets that were kind of the bridge between algebra one and algebra two, or maybe even some of the stuff that I knew was more algebra one. Threw all that on an automated system, like Khan Academy or Desmos, said you’ve got to complete so many of these things at a proficiency level of 80%. So I’ve done it, even though I internally struggle with it.

Sharona: Well I think you just said something critical, though. Because if you look at some of the newer tools like Aleks, someone who doesn’t have to do homework can get to a proficiency level very, very fast.

So it’s actually checking for proficiency. So an automated system can check for proficiency. And there’s no reason why you wouldn’t do that in a situation, like you said, where you’ve got an Algebra 1 standard, you’re in an Algebra 2 class. Why not throw it in an automated system? As long as that automated system is able to handle that checking for proficiency. The challenge becomes when you’re forcing completion of stuff they don’t need.

So what I was saying is, so it’s one thing, if you’re like, look, the way I’m going to check for proficiency is you’ve got to get a certain whatever, but I would prefer a system like Aleks or Khan Academy. Both of which actually check for proficiency. So even Khan Academy, you have to get what three right in a row or something.

I don’t know if that’s still true, and if you get one wrong, guess what? You’re not a proficiency. Like, that’s okay. There’s the one I’m talking about, though, is still checking for percentage of completion.

Bosley: Yeah.

Sharona: Which when you get to completion, that’s where you’re forcing a student to do more than they have to do.

So my main concern when I see this in grading architectures is that the bar is too high. So you have situations where you’re like, well, to get an A, clearly you have to get 90 percent of the homework correct. Well, no. Many students who can get an A don’t need that much homework. So I want to question that piece of it.

Maybe it’s 75%. Or maybe there’s a way that different levels count at different ways. I’m just saying that it’s not the end of the world to communicate with students in the language they sort of know that says, look, you need to do some of this stuff. And again, there’s a difference between completion and correctness.

So those are the two main ways that I’ve seen people handle this work that is not intended to be evidence of proficiency.

Bosley: Which also brings up another unique difference that I’ve seen instructors, both K 12 and higher ed kind of struggle with. So a lot of times, just like when you’re learning a new language, you translate from what you know to the new language and back this idea of homework.

What we’re talking about now, a lot of people will hear and immediately think homework. That’s what they’re talking about. And it could be, but the role of homework actually could be either. And this came up in a training I did last summer with one of the colleges that I went and visited and did a half day thing with, is that they were, they were saying, some of our homework assignments are homework assignments because they are too labor intensive to try to put on an assessment. Like these are detailed problems that would just take longer than an hour long setting.

That’s not work building towards proficiency. That is a proficiency check. So homework, the way traditional grading uses homework actually could be broken up into what we’re talking about. The stuff that’s building towards proficiency and actually proficient checks. Just because it’s not a test, it’s something done at home, it doesn’t mean you can’t use that as evidence of proficiency in your learning targets.

So depending on what your homework is, it might actually fall into the category of what we’re talking about, or it might actually fall into your proficiency assessments. And there’s nothing that says you can’t grade or shouldn’t grade those homework assignments with your proficiency scales and using those as evidence to those learning targets instead of just this general stuff that we’re talking about now.

Sharona: Well, and I think that’s one of the biggest issues, or biggest things that I’ve learned switching to alternative grading, is in traditional grading we have these categories that are based on time, place and manner. So they’re either a proctored exam or they’re a portfolio work that’s done at home.

So they have these names in our grade books like exams, final exam, quizzes, homework. None of that, though, actually identifies this object. as to where it falls in learning. And so we don’t use any of those language. We do use the word quiz just because that is a technical object in the canvas learning system.

So we call it a checkpoint quiz and it just behaves technically different than an assignment. Those are the two categories in canvas. So we do use the language of quiz for that reason. But it’s a time, place and manner thing. But even then we have some "quizzes" that are checking for proficiency.

And then we have other "quizzes", like a test quiz that’s really part of our participation category because it’s them learning to use the technology. So my preference is to not identify things by time, place, and manner, but to identify something by intent. What is the intent of this thing in your grading architecture?

Bosley: Yeah, and that’s exactly what my point was because learning something new, we’re translating from these things that we typically use, my quizzes are these, my homework are these, and no, it shouldn’t be based off of time, place, and manner like you were saying, but over intent of the assignment.

Is that assignment meant to build a student’s learning and build towards their proficiency of a learning target? Or is that assignment assessing that learning target? And that assessing doesn’t have to be a traditional quiz test or exam. That can be so many other things, which we’ve talked about in other episodes.

I don’t want to go down that rabbit hole right now, but yeah, but new practitioners a lot of times have a hard time translating that in their head. They’re like, okay, I’ve got this category of homework that that whole thing has to go to this new category. No, could and should be broken up based on intent of what is that purpose of that assignment, like you were saying.

Sharona: And intent is based on what you as the instructor designed it to be, doesn’t always mean it’s going to end up that way.

So for example, you might be intending to do an activity in class that is a participation activity. So it’s an activity that provides space for learning. And you hear this unbelievable explanation from one student to another on a topic. There’s no reason you can’t go, Hey, I’m going to write that down, that was evidence of learning.

It wasn’t the intent. And I wouldn’t change that activity to be something different. I’d keep the activity, but take evidence of learning where you get it.

Bosley: Exactly.

Sharona: Now, the other misunderstanding that goes with this, I think, because people aren’t thinking about this issue of intent, is this issue about due dates. And retakes and things like that. So do you want to say something about due dates?

Bosley: So I know one of the biggest pushbacks I get, especially in the K 12 world, although I’ve seen it in the higher ed and I think you have too, is this misconception that, about the fourth pillar, that eventually mastery, or proficiency, is what matters, means you have to accept late work. And you have to accept late work all the time. That due dates are evil and should be done away with. And if a student wants to hand you an entire semester’s worth of work on the second to last day of the semester, you’ve got to take it and grade at all.

Sharona: And this message, I think because of some of the COVID era policies, has gotten to students.

So students now think that due dates are suggestions. And quite frankly, for someone who is as embedded in grading reform as I am, I’m probably one of the strictest I know on due dates. Because we built the flexibility into the system, not into the individual due dates. So I’m constantly having students shocked when I won’t extend a due date.

Bosley: Well, and again, the due dates are tied to the intent of the assignment. There are certain things, certain assignments’ intent that, yeah, I am steel rigid on the due date. And then there are others that the due date is a suggestion to keep you on pace for my students that if I didn’t have any due dates would just either give them permission to procrastinate or don’t have the ability to not have the due date. But it’s a suggestion. Like yes, there are things that I will take several months late. It’s dependent on the intent of the assignment.

Sharona: And I think there’s two reasons for the due date variation with that intent. Well, several actually I can think of. So one is, like you talked about, it’s about the intent. If the intent is for you to prepare for class, it doesn’t do you any good, it’s a waste of your time ,to do this material after the class has passed. You missed it.

Bosley: Exactly. That is one of those intent that my due dates are firm. No. If the intent of the assignment was to help prepare you for what we were doing in class, I don’t care if it’s a day after the class. I don’t care if you turn it in five hours after. No, it was meant to be done before class. That was the intent. That was the purpose. And I will be very firm on those due dates.

Sharona: Well, and more importantly, because those are our intent, but the point is the value is gone.

Bosley: Yeah.

Sharona: We’re asking you to prepare so that you can come into class and engage and engage in a qualified, well defined way that there’s value for you and your fellow students. That value is gone. It’s like an airline seat and the plane has taken off.

Bosley: Yeah.

Sharona: There’s no value anymore. So we’re very firm on that. We’re also, in our class, in our coordinated class, extremely firm on our proficiency check deadlines. And that’s for a very practical, logistical reason.

We are coordinating across multiple instructors, across thousands of students. We literally start grading an hour after the deadline. So our checkpoint quizzes are due at five, and we’re grading by six, which means that we’re releasing answer keys and feedback. We can’t have a student turning it in six or seven hours after that, because the answer keys are available.

So with all of these things, though, it’s not a crash and burn. It’s not that that is not recoverable. The recovery from missing those due dates is built into the system. So if you miss a preparation deadline, do more practice. If you miss a mastery check, there’s five of them. And if you miss it for a reason that we’re supposed to accommodate, like a medical, we make a note of it.

And at the end of the semester, if you still need another opportunity, we’ll reopen one. I think in seven years, I’ve had to do it once.

Bosley: Yeah, I had one this semester, an athlete, that missed a couple for athletic purposes. Even though our assessments are asynchronous and they’re open for extended periods of time, this student was at a multi day tournament out of state actually had very sketchy wifi.

Fine. It didn’t hurt her because I’m not averaging in a zero. Did it mean she had to do it on a later mastery check? Yes. Had she gotten to the end and still not had it, would I have opened up another one for her? Absolutely. That’s where the flexibility comes in. I didn’t end up having to because she got it on the other mastery checks, but let’s be very clear though.

We’re able to do that because we have tools in place that literally we can generate hundreds of these in a matter of seconds. So let’s be clear that we have the tools that give us the luxury to do that. Which we’ve talked about on several episodes, the importance of utilizing the tools out there in the most efficient manner.

So I want to be clear on that. We have the tools that allow us that freedom.

Sharona: So we have some due dates that are for a reason that we believe in. But then there’s other due dates that, like you said, they’re our best guess of when you might need it. But there’s a reason that is unfortunate, in my opinion, but very important, that we put even those suggested due dates in. Even though they can turn them in late.

And for us, it’s that LMS system. So what we have discovered is that for all of the work that has gone into LMS systems to make them extremely student approachable and friendly, students don’t use them the way that really we intend them to use them. What the LMS system does, at least Canvas does, and I assume Schoology might as well, is it takes everything you put into your Canvas shell and boils it down to a list of to dos based on due dates.

So anything else that you’ve put into your Canvas shell that does not have a due date attached, the student might never even see it.

Bosley: And I know Schoology does that. I don’t know, I’m sure there’s LMS systems out there that don’t, but I would guess the majority of them do.

Sharona: And quite frankly, I don’t blame the students, because they’re taking four or five classes, have multiple things due in a week per class, so information overload is humongous. It’s very big.

Bosley: And just like I was just saying, we as instructors need to utilize our tools, they’re seeing this generated to do list and they’re utilizing that tool to try to help them be organized and know when things need to get done. So yeah, I’ve got to put some due dates there just so they shows up on their to do list.

Sharona: And so in fact, one of the things that we’ve started doing, because we used to have everything that’s due on the to do list and it was overwhelming. Students couldn’t distinguish what was important. So we took some of the due dates that are actually due in our learning system, our textbook system, which is Achieve for Statistics. We don’t have those due dates in canvas anymore, but we generated a weekly checklist that students have to open and then literally they just self report what they’ve completed and they "get points" as an incentive.

It’s towards this triple PPP, whatever you want to call it. But it reminds them to go over to the other system and check it. So it’s like a tickler reminder. Again, these are just the things that students need to learn how to do. So we’re trying to provide some scaffolded work on how to do that.

Bosley: Yeah. I’ve talked about some of the things that I have very firm due dates on there’s other things that I’ll put one on there so it shows I’m on a to do list, but yeah, I will take it. Up until the day before the final or the final mastery check of that learning target.

And that is all the practice stuff. Anything that the intent is practice, Hey, you’re struggling with this learning target. I noticed you didn’t do this practice, go back and do it.

I don’t care that it said it was due October 1st and it’s now November 20th. You still don’t have the learning target. Go back and do that. You’re still getting the intent of that assignment. You’re still practicing it. So of course I’m going to take it. And same thing, like you were saying with some of our mastery checks or proficiency assignments. If I’ve got a student that needs more, that has done all of the practice stuff and is still struggling with that learning target, here’s a couple of more.

And here’s the big difference between equality and equity. Is it that I need to assign that to everyone now? Would someone say, Oh, well, then you’re giving them, you’re not being equal with everyone. It’s not about equal. It’s about equity. The student needed more practice. So I’m going to give them more practice.

Like there’s nothing wrong with that. And I, I know I’ve worked with people going well, but then you’re giving them more opportunities for points. It’s not fair. I’m being equitable. It’s what that student needed. They needed more practice in that one learning target. So why would I give it to everyone when it’s only this one or two students that needed it?

Sharona: And any student who has not hit that threshold on that triple P by the end of the semester, I will give any of them more points opportunities. Because it doesn’t take it away from anyone else. Someone who’s hit the threshold? They don’t need it. They’re done

Bosley: Yeah, but when you’re giving it to them, you’re not giving it to them randomly. You’re giving them something to do that is related to a learning target they have not gotten proficiency on yet.

It’s something they still need to do So it’s not like you’re just like oh, here’s extra credit from traditional worlds. Here’s a word finder or word cross on definitions of statistical terms. No, you’re giving them something that again, is building their learning, their proficiency of a specific learning target that they don’t yet have.

Sharona: Two things are coming up for me with that as well. If I have a student who has all the other learning outcomes except this triple P, they don’t have to get the triple P at all. The way my grading architecture is set up, you could completely ignore the triple P still get an A, still get anything you want.

Now it’s a little bit harder. You need to show a little bit more mastery or proficiency on the actual content. But also, at the end of the day, if someone’s gotten most of it, but still wants that triple P, I can always throw a metacognitive reflection at them. Every single student can always use a little bit more thinking about their thinking.

So it is very much that equity piece, which there was one other thing that what you just said also reminded me, there’s one other equity reason to have due dates. And that is when you look at the scale from neurotypical to neurodivergent, different students need different things. And we have heard from many, many, many people that many neurodivergent, although not all, this is not a blanket statement, but many of them need additional structure, not less structure.

So by providing these due dates, we are giving them structure. And then for students for whom it doesn’t work, Yeah, we have all kinds of parts, especially the practice part, throw the due dates out the window. Now, the other thing we do, though, that I do, and I think you do this too, is I can only handle so much flexibility before getting overwhelmed.

So one of the things that I do to incentivize students to meet due dates, even if they’re allowed to be late, is a non grade consequence, which is I give extra feedback. So I don’t always give feedback on practice problems. It’s beyond my scope. But if you turn these practice, certain practice problems, there’s only specific ones, if you turn them in by the deadline, you’re going to get feedback from me before your mastery check before your checkpoint quiz.

And so what I’m also trying to reinforce with students is that when you do things on other people’s timescales, sometimes you get something that you wouldn’t otherwise get. If you turn in a journal paper on time, as opposed to 2 months late, you might have a much better review and revision cycle with the editor of that journal, than you would, if you get the extension. They might allow you the extension, but then you’re in this massive rush and your paper’s not as good. It’s a real life consequence.

Bosley: It’s funny. I had a conversation not that long ago with English colleague of mine. We were talking about these due dates and about homework and trying to talk to him and get him to understand that you can’t just ask me this question about homework. Because my homework, even though it might still be homework, it has, you know, very different intents.

Some of it, yes, I do have due dates, others I don’t. But he was asking me about homework and if he should take something and I’m like, well, don’t think of it as homework. What he was talking about were these prep notes for Socratic seminar that they were doing in class and the student is wanting to turn it in three weeks after the Socratic seminar.

And I’m like, no, I would absolutely not be taking that. And then they’re like, well, doesn’t that break all of your EGI trainings that we have to accept everything late and due dates? And I’m like, yeah, this is that kind of misconception that I was talking about and why we really need to look at the intent of the assignment, not the category, not the time, place, and setting.

Sharona: And that’s probably something that we haven’t done a lot of talking about is this opportunity we have to stop using time, place, and manner as a default with all of these various things we do. And really, I mean, this student’s question that I got this week of what’s the purpose of all of this? This really kind of stunned me in a way, because we have done so much thinking and so much communicating in our syllabus.

There’s pages in our syllabus about this, but this student, because this student did not come to class, this student clearly did not read the syllabus in depth, most of my students do not, is defaulting back to this time, place and manner and thinking if I just check off this checklist of tasks you’ve given me, that’s what it means to complete a course and pass it. And I..

Bosley: And let’s be clear what this student had actually done. The student had done a lot of the prep work, a lot of the things that were in the learning management system that the intent was prep for your first couple of actual sessions when, after you’ve done all your community building and stuff in your class. But doing all that prep work, that’s a lot of the things that were coming up do first and then seeing because our learning management system. This is one of the things about Canvas I don’t like, but it is going to show that average. It’s if you go to the gradebook instead of the mastery tab, it is going to show the average of those points.

And the student was seeing that, oh, they’ve got a C because of how much of this prep work. Not understanding, because they hadn’t read the syllabus and because they hadn’t come to class, that all of those points are just one out of 15 learning targets. And if that’s the only learning target you get, you’re going to have an F.

Sharona: Well and that’s the thing is that a student who doesn’t understand is most likely going to skip a zero point assignment. But all of our proficiency checks are worth zero points because they’re not part of that triple P. And yet they’re the vast bulk of the grade. And I think that’s the other piece that we need to really grapple with as instructors is the students, through all the training and traditional grading, the grading system is all pervasive. It is 90 percent of the interactions in your class.

Bosley: Yeah. We were talking about this a couple of episodes ago. We had a whole buy in episode where this is what we were talking about getting buy in from our students. It’s not that they buying in and agreeing.

It’s that they’re buying in and understanding. I think it was with Steven’s episode we were talking about the fact that more likely, students have had a lot more traditional classes than they’ve had alternative grading. So they’ve been trained to do it this way. So yeah, we do have to spend some time breaking that and retraining them how our classes and our grading architecture and structure works. And that does take time, effort, and has given me a few more gray hairs over the years.

Sharona: This student was and is extremely upset. Has not been able to come to my office hours. I opened up a zoom for them. They weren’t able to attend and thinks that they have this certain percentage. Because the other problem with canvas is until you actually grade more things, it only shows the percentage out of what the student has attempted. So until you actually start to bring zeros in, the student has a false sense of what they’re doing.

Bosley: Yeah, but that kind of goes back to the student, like most other students, have been trained and programmed that that’s how traditional grading works. So it’s hard to blame the student for having that misconception. I actually don’t blame the student at all for having that misconception, but yeah, that’s the kind of things that we do have to deprogram and reprogram our students.

Sharona: The thing is, before we had these electronic grade books, students would have to ask the instructor. And the instructor would have a more sophisticated understanding, even of traditional grading. But in my opinion, even if you’re using traditional grading, Canvas is lying to your students all the time.

So when a bunch of zeros suddenly come in and the student’s grade drops, like they’re shocked. But I literally had the student asking me, what’s the point? And I was like, the point is to learn. And they’re like, Oh, really? I’m like, yeah, but, literally, because the student hasn’t been in class, hasn’t met me, has not heard me speak.

But it just was a little bit disheartening, to be honest, that this happened. And I get it. I get it. We’ve really done this. This is the way it’s working.

Bosley: We’re kind of getting a little bit off topic and we’re about coming to our time. So want to kind of wrap it up.

One of the things that we’re hoping that this episode kind of brought to light is let’s stop looking at our assignments and our assessments and the things we do in class based on time, setting and manner instead look at intent and know that those intents should have different grading. And give yourself permission to not have to grade everything on a proficiency scale.

I cannot tell you how many people I’ve worked with that are like, What do you mean? I don’t have to grade for correctness on everything. It’s supposed to be practice. This is when we want our students making mistakes. So allow them to do that. And then the other thing is with the deadlines.

This blanket statements, which I believe is a huge misconception and a reason people push back against alternative grading methods of due dates don’t matter. You know what, actually, depending on the intent of the assignment, they might, they might not.

Sharona: Exactly. And even on the grading for completeness, I want to be a little nuanced there too. Just because a student writes five words on a piece of paper and turns it in. We want to let them make mistakes, not let them get this false idea that they can game the system for credit when they don’t do anything. So, if they turn in something that’s half blank, I’m more likely to give them a zero and tell them to do it again, if it’s a practice.

I’m not going to take the ten points this is worth and give them, oh, it’s eight, it’s five, it’s two. I’m not interested in the partial credit. At some point, it’s all or nothing, and the all doesn’t have to be correct, but it should probably mostly be there. Something should be there.

Bosley: What kind of monster doesn’t give partial points?

Sharona: Drew, not a monster, Lewis. Right?

Bosley: If you guys don’t know what we’re laughing at, go back and listen to our, our interviews with Katie and Drew.

Sharona: Katie Mattaini. Yeah. So I agree with you completely. If I had to give a couple of takeaways from this episode, focus on intent with everything that you do in both the design of your grading architecture and the tasks that you give your students.

And by the way, there is an intent that we didn’t mention because it’s something that I do that literally doesn’t hit the grading system ever, which is sometimes I do things because they’re fun or interesting. And they’re related to my topic, they’re related to my course. I do this more in linear algebra.

I have these three application problems that at the end of the semester, we work through in class. They are not part of the grading architecture. Anywhere. They don’t show up anywhere. They’re not part of the triple P. They’re nothing. And I have students do them. Because we’ve gotten to that point in the semester where, hey, it’s kind of cool to learn how Google does its page ranking based on linear algebra. Why not?

Bosley: Yeah. And was it Steve Dr. Steven Clontz, I was talking about one of those assignments too, that actually, I think you probably got them from him.

Sharona: I’m using his assignment. Yes. He wrote the problem.

Bosley: These in depth assignments that do actually still help students build the skills of the learning targets that you actually are assessing, but it’s this real world stuff that it’s just fun to do.

I know some people are going to be listening to this and think I’m full of it, but when you start getting your students to focus on the learning instead of the points, they actually do like to learn too. So doing these kind of stuff isn’t a, Oh, if it’s not worth anything, I’m not going to do it.

No, by the time we’re doing them, they’re starting to appreciate the fact that they’re learning and do it because it’s fun.

Sharona: So I want to thank everyone for joining us for another episode. I hope that this one really was able to expound on a topic that we get asked a lot, but don’t always have enough time to talk about.

Boz, any last thoughts on this?

Bosley: I just want to encourage people. We brought this up in our last episode, we’re really wanting to add this kind of new segment where we’re having comments or questions that we try to answer on the podcast. So I’m hoping this episode might have brought up some of those questions or maybe just some of the ways that you handle some of these in your classes.

If so, come drop us some questions or recorded questions on our website. Sharona, how did they do that again?

Sharona: You’re going to go to http://www.thegradingpod.Com and click on the contact us. And one other new feature on our website I did want to add, if anyone has made it this far, is if you have someone who’s new to alternative grading, we have put together a getting started playlist on our website.

So you can refer them to that page and it has the seven parts of the getting started episodes. We now have enough episodes on our website those are a little harder to find. So we did put that playlist together as well.

Bosley: All right. And thank you. And until next time, we’ll see you later.

Sharona: Please share your thoughts and comments about this episode by commenting on this episode’s page on our website, http://www.thegradingpod.com Or you can share with us publicly on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. If you would like to suggest a future topic for the show or would like to be considered as a potential guest for the show, please use the contact us form on our website. The Grading Podcast is created and produced by Robert Bosley and Sharona Krinsky.

The full transcript of this episode is available on our website.

Bosley: The views expressed here are those of the host and our guests. These views are not necessarily endorsed by the Cal State system or by the Los Angeles Unified School District.