It’s final exam week, and I am sitting in my office working through one final digital pile of student submissions. I see summer, shining on the horizon, but here I sit, wrestling once again with a hard truth: many of our students don’t read the instructions we provide in assignments, and many don’t read our guiding feedback either.
It’s frustrating.
An Alt Grading PLC is Born
It is this frustration, rekindled semester after semester, that brought a small band of curious instructors together this year. As a PLC, we met every other week to ask some uncomfortable questions: Is there a more effective way to engage students and encourage their growth? Is the traditional approach of tallying (and docking) points really worth the effort? And underneath both of those, what has to change so that our feedback lands?
The Strategies
After surveying the landscape of alternative grading approaches, we each identified strategies that looked like a good fit for our courses, took a deep dive, and brought back what we found. Some of what we found was surprising — like the growth students experienced in a contract grading environment. Some confirmed what we already suspected — like, ungrading is, as one of us put it, ‘a little too jiggly’ for courses with clear-cut competencies. Either way, all of it gave us something to think about.
(Below you’ll find the strategies we explored, along with resources and further reading. If you’d like more information, reach out!)
Side Quests and Bonus Content
Even better than exploring new ideas in the realm of teaching and learning were the discussions we had and the resources we shared. In the true spirit of a PLC, our meetings did not have strict agendas or defined leadership roles. We came together to talk and share, and we let the topics of conversation go where they pleased. Some of the most practical ideas that emerged had nothing to do with overhauling a grading system entirely. One instructor shared her “Life Pass” policy: each student gets one no-questions-asked extension per semester, good for most assignments. The scarcity of it, we learned, makes students want to save it for something that really matters. Paired with a “real life” rule — if you ask for an extension 24 hours before the deadline, like you would ask a boss, we can negotiate — it builds in flexibility while also teaching students something about professional communication. Another idea that stuck with us: hiding grades in Canvas until students respond to feedback, essentially requiring them to engage with comments before seeing a score. We also talked about Module 0, a course module open all semester with tips on navigating basic college and computer skills, a practical response to the students who don’t yet know how to “do college.”
What We’re Taking With Us
The members of our PLC will continue to meet next semester as we each undertake a trial run of an alt-grading strategy in our courses. I am going to pivot to a portfolio approach to grading and feedback in my English 101 courses. I know that next December, when I sit at my computer stuffed full of cheese and cookies, longing for winter break, I will have tried something different to get my students to connect with their learning and read my feedback. Like my PLC colleagues, I am not ready to stop writing it. I just want it to matter.
Resources and Further Reading
- Alternative Grading Strategies: A Foundational Reading List for Professional Learning Communities
- Alternative Grading Strategies: Pros and Cons
- Standards-Based Grading: Grades reflect a student’s demonstrated mastery of specific learning outcomes using descriptive scales, rather than averaging points across assignments.
- Mastery-Based Grading: Students must demonstrate proficiency on defined skills or concepts, with opportunities to reassess until mastery is achieved — recent evidence of mastery replaces earlier attempts.
- Portfolio Grading: Students curate a collection of work over the course or program, often with reflective commentary, and are graded on the whole body of work with an emphasis on growth and revision.
- Ungrading: Individual assignments receive rich feedback rather than marks, with students developing self-evaluation skills through reflection and dialogue. When a final grade is required, it emerges from a collaborative conversation between student and instructor.
- Labor-Based Grading: Developed by Asao Inoue, grades are tied to the effort and engagement students put in — time on task and completion — rather than quality judgments that can encode cultural or linguistic bias.
- Contract-Based Grading: Students and instructors agree in advance on what work must be completed to earn specific grades, typically guaranteeing a baseline grade (often a B) for completing defined activities, with higher grades requiring additional or exemplary work.