What is Ungrading?

Midway through his TED Talk Jay Percell asks his enthralled audience, “Are you a teacher, or are you a grader?”1 Most laugh, but it is an uneasy laughter in response to a question that has likely haunted more of the audience than they would care to admit. Who among us as educators hasn’t responded to the timid student asking, “How will this assignment/homework/project/test impact my grade”? Have you ever wondered if there was a better way to instill curiosity and motivation in students, and still provide them the meaningful feedback necessary to their growth? Are you tired of feeling more like a “grader” than a “teacher”?

The latest buzz in education circles is “ungrading”. Broadly speaking, upgrading refers to practices that center qualitative, reflective, and iterative appraisals of student progress, rather than reliance on quantitative measures (i.e., grades, letters, percentages, points).2 There are some challenges to implementing upgrading, to be sure, but a growing number of school districts and even universities are embracing this trend.

How do I start ungrading?

How can you embrace upgrading principles when evaluating written work from students, particularly in Feedback Studio?

A few tips from this educator:

• When setting up your assignment, do not assign a point value.

• Do select a rubric for your assignments, but change the rubric to no points, or assign qualitative ratings (Does Not Meet Expectations, Approaches Expectations, Meets Expectations, Exceeds Expectations) that holistically evaluate the criteria.

• Use QuikMarks to give specific, relevant, and actionable feedback (also known as “where-to-next feedback”3)

• Align your QuikMarks to your rubric by clicking on each one, and selecting “Assign Criterion”

• Give your students summary voice and/or text comments on written work

• Explicitly teach students how to access and interpret feedback in Feedback Studio

Good luck on your upgrading journey. Please share success stories, wonderments, and questions below!

Works Referenced

1https://www.ted.com/talks/jay_percell_make_grading_point_less_eliminating_points_to_foster_student_motivation

2 https://www.jessestommel.com/ungrading-an-faq/ ; https://ungrading.net/ 

3 https://www.turnitin.com/resources/where-to-next-feedback#download