Photo: Colleen Hayes / NBC.

Letter grades are an ubiquitous feature of education. You have probably been assigned letter grades for your schoolwork and courses since you were a child. But is this the right way to assess your learning while at UB? Perhaps all your professors should adopt what Jesse Stommel calls an “ungrading” approach to assessment?

For this module, there are 4 learning outcomes. When done, you will be able to…

1. Describe the history of assigning letter grades in education,
2. Compare the benefits and burdens of traditional letter grading to those of Jesse Stommel’s “ungrading”, and
3. Identify alternative approaches to assessment that do not involve assigning letter grades, and
4. Reflect on whether your courses at UB should drop letter grades and adopt a scheme of ungrading.

Read & Annotate This:

How to Ungrade

Context

Since high school, you have probably been repeatedly told about the importance of your course grades and G.P.A. Unless you are getting straight As, you also probably don’t particularly like being graded. Even for all you high performers, though, the pressure to get A after A surely comes with no small amount of stress and anxiety. (For those of you immune to such worries, I am extremely jealous!)

Meanwhile, let me tell you what: Each and every one of your professors at UB absolutely hates grading and tries to spend as little time on it as possible. Indeed, most of your professors are probably lucky enough to have a Teaching Assistant do that drudgery for them.

Finally, even employers are increasingly finding that “G.P.A.’s are worthless as a criteria for hiring.” The rise of grade inflation may only be making this worse.

So if students, instructors, and employers uniformly dislike grading, should the practice even continue? In a blog post, Jesse Stommel (2018) argues that instructors should stop assigning letter grades and instead practice what he calls “ungrading”. Stommel maintains that while letter grades may be useful for bureaucratic standardization, they are dubious for whatever it is you really value about your education. Ungrading is supposed to put the focus back on where it belongs: your learning.

Indeed, it might seem that by being so far from removed from the true meaning and measure of education, letter grades are simply a bunch of BS. This is why I have included (in the optional “Curious for More?” section below) an article by Harry Frankfurt (1988). There Frankfurt distinguishes between lies and BS because while the liar cares about the truth (so that the liar can lead you away from it), the BS “artist” doesn’t care at all about the truth. By standardizing the subjective experience of learning, have letter grades become that sort of BS?

In his post, Stommel talks briefly about the history of grading. If you are curious to learn more about that, I have also included (again, in the optional “Curious for More?” section below) an article by Jack Schneider and Ethan Hutt (2014).

During my videos, I will talk about three different types of feedback. This comes from a book chapter (also in the optional “Curious for More?” section below) by Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen (2014).

Reading Questions

As you read, keep these questions in mind:

1. According to Jesse Stommel, why did schools start assigning letter grades? Why does it seem that letter grades are still used today?
2. What problems with assigning letter grades does Stommel identify? Have you notices problems like these in your classes? Have you experienced any other problems associated with letter grades?
3. What benefits with “ungrading” does Stommel note? Are there any potential downsides to this approach to assessment?
4. What are the nine alternatives to letter grading that Stommel presents? Have you seen any of these used in your classes before? Would you like to see any of these used in your classes?

Although I strongly suggest that you write out brief answers to these questions, you do not have to turn in written responses. You do, however, need to be prepared to answer questions like these on module quizzes and the unit exams.

References

Frankfurt, H. (1988). On bullshit. In The importance of what we care about: Philosophical essays (pp. 117–133). Cambridge University Press.

Schneider, J., & Hutt, E. (2014). Making the grade: A history of the A–F marking scheme. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 46(2), 201–224.

Stommel, J. (2018, March 11). How to ungrade. Jesse Stommel. https://www.jessestommel.com/how-to-ungrade/

Stone, D., & Heen, S. (2014). Separate appreciation, coaching, and evaluation. In Thanks for the feedback: The science and art of receiving feedback well (pp. 29–45). Penguin Books.

Watch This:

Video 1	Video 2
Video 3	Video 4
Video 5	Video 6
Video 7	Video 8

Do This:

Module 25 Quiz Due: December 9

UB Course Evaluations Due: December 13

Rate My Professors Due: December 13

Curious for More? (Optional)

On Bullshit

Making the Grade

Separate Appreciation, Coaching, and Evaluation

Acknowledgement

The idea for this module came directly from an insightful Twitter thread by C. Thi Nguyen (@add_hawk), where he talks about his Introduction to Philosophy unit on “Are Grades Bullshit?” I have long struggled with how to grade in my courses, and so Nguyen showed me how to invite students to reflect on and share their perspectives on grading.