Grading — report on a new approach

This semester I tried a new approach to grading.  The official name (or at least one of them) is 'specification grading.'  It's also very close (if not functionally equivalent) to an approach I heard someone speak about years ago.  The gist of it is (a) all assignments are pass/no pass with the criteria for a pass being really explicitly spelled out and (b) end of semester grades are determined by which assignments are passed.  Thus, students know at the beginning of the semester that if they want a C+ in the course they must pass a certain set of assignments, if they want a B+ they know what they must pass for that.

The talk that I heard years ago described this in terms of points and made the connection to video games.  The speaker explained it that the course had different "levels" like a video game and that students can try to pass a level infinite times but that the grade at the end of the semester is what level the student has made it to.  And, he gave students points for passing so it was a collection of points as opposed to mere 'passing' that was relevant.

I set my courses up with freewrites (students just need to spend 30 minutes writing after doing the reading), essays prior to class posted for everyone so they could be used as the focus for class discussion (10 of these were necessary to get an A but lower numbers of these for lower grades), then 3 different papers with each additional paper getting one to an A.  Thus, passing paper #1 gets one to a C, passing #2 to a B and #3 is necessary for an A.  There's also benefit for 'good faith attempts' on essays and 'good faith attempts' on paper #2.  For my lower level class instead of essays, they had to post questions and then also responses to class mates questions.

Anyway, I used this over J-term with success and I think it's been a success this semester but I need to define 'success.'

First, I designed it so that students are largely dragged along to try to pass the next thing since they can see that they "only" need to do x to get the next higher grade.  But, of course, many students don't do this.  So, one of the consequences of this is that some students decided early on that all they wanted/needed was a C and so they did only that work.  In terms of grading, this had been a serious win, students who have no interest in learning more just aren't submitting papers that they'd be doing just because they had to.  So, it's a success in terms of work for me, but it's possibly a lesser success if one thinks that making students go through the motions has any benefit to their learning.

The other benefit is in terms of the pass/no pass approach.  Students like it because it's really clear what they need to do and, my god, grading is so much easier.  I still comment on papers, but figuring out whether something has passed or not is so easy.

Now, the big concern is the number of students who appear to just not care about getting better grades.  So, there are the students who just flake and so nothing — I'm pretty sure they'd do nothing regardless of my system.  But then there are those who just decide to do what they need to pass the course and nothing more.  This was bothering me yesterday as I've, historically, said that students need to do *everything* in order to pass thinking that when they get into the work world, they'll have to do all of their assigned tasks they can't just pick and choose.  But, I think I figured out how to frame it for myself and the students.  Namely, this is them working on commission.  They get to choose what they receive and the effort they are willing to put in.  So, if I think of it as parallel to working on commission, that makes me feel less like this is a win simply for me and grading.

The students who are working hard are apparently enjoying it and it means that they are experiencing far more control in their lives.  If they are fairly certain that they aren't going to pass a paper, they don't need to go through the demoralizing task of confirming that they don't understand.  Or, they can be proactive and come and talk to me before hand instead of faking it (because they have to turn something in) and then responding based on feedback.

So, there you go.

Oh, on the mental health front, apparently waking up each morning wanting to die is not normal and when you tell your psychiatrist this, they add medication.  So, Abilify has been added to help get me out of this dark pit.