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Ungrading: Exploring a New CurricuLUM

Anthony Lum

EDER 633 + EDER 634 // Project 1 & Project 2

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Project Synopsis

Students have been conditioned throughout most of their educational experience to believe that achieving good grades matters more than anything else, often at the expense of actual learning (Kohn & Saffel, 2020).

That increased sense of stress and anxiety has been shown to negatively impact students’ academic performance (Kohn & Saffel, 2020), where this pressure often drives students to take shortcuts in their education, through poor study habits, producing low-quality work, and inadequate preparation for skills beyond excelling at test-taking .

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Grading

Grading is commonly used to provide a snapshot of student achievement through assignments, performances, and examinations, that symbolize the level of achievement of a particular task (Walvoord & Anderson, 1998), and is widely used across all levels of education to coordinate between education institutions for compatibility, and to minimize subjectivity (Kjærgaard et al., 2023).

However, it fails to provide students with specific feedback about their learning, does not show what a student has learned, what they have not learned, nor the things they discovered on their own along the way, and it is not a reliable system to compare against other students from other institutions (Kohn & Saffel, 2020).

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Ungrading

Ungrading is an educational approach that emphasize learning, feedback, and student agency. With the goals of reducing grade-related stress and encourage better engagement with the course material.

Some examples of ungrading can include providing detailed feedback without assigning grades to individual assignments, using a pass/fail system, portfolio-based assessments, and conducting student self-evaluations. Some educators may eliminate grades on assignments while still providing a final course grade, typically determined through collaborative discussions or student self-assessment based on their work throughout the semester.

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Ungrading strategies can be adapted to different disciplines and class sizes, all with the goal of creating a more meaningful and effective learning experience.

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Project Timeline

Literature Review

August 2024 -

December 2024

Additional Research

December 2024 - February 2025

Questionnaire

February 2025 -

March 2025

Online Resource

March 2025 -

Present

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Ungrading: Exploring a New CurricuLUM

Literature Review:

A Deeper Dive:

My initial findings about Ungrading were positive and I was optimistic about the approach being the perfect tool to solve all my problems. There was lots of research, examples, resources, etc. out there, I had high hopes for the Ungrading approach.

Ungrading isn't the perfect approach that I initially thought it would be, and there are many unique factors that go into creating a classroom. A one size fits all solution or learning approach won’t benefit everyone, it'll be a case by case basis, or class by class.

I started this project because I often found myself dreading one aspect of my teaching experience, it was always the grading portion.

I wanted to find a way to look at grading differently and come up with some kind of alternative approach. I stumble upon the Ungrading approach and wanted to do a deep dive into the topic.

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Questionnaire

I was able to receive responses about Ungrading from about 20 participants, all providing me with a look into their experiences throughout their time in school, their understanding of grading and Ungrading, and some suggestions and ideas as to what parts of the education system that can be improved.

65% of participants felt that grades accurately reflected their understanding of the course

75% of participants main concern was about student agency, and how it could be difficult to maintain

85% of participants would be more willing to take risks and explore new ideas in their assignments with ungrading

90% of participants would have chosen Ungrading if it was an option during their time in school*

*Only if applied to certain courses like the creative realm, social sciences, humanities, ethics, or other courses that involve more subjective concepts.

Participants cited that their main motivators (aside from grades) were their personal interest in the material, and the materials relevance with their future career.

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Online Resources

The Ungrading approach can be very broad and come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. It's meant to be this way so that it's flexible and adaptable for all variables that come with learning, from the environment, students, accessibility, etc.

This section of my website is meant to give educators interested in implementing bits and pieces of the Ungrading approach a handful of resources to get started, or to help you learn more about Ungrading.

I'm looking to continue updating this resource page as I continue my own practice and inclusion of Ungrading.

Introduction to Ungrading

Alternative Assessments

Practical Tools

The Ungrading Handbook

Recommended Websites

Student Agency & Learning

Recommended Books & Articles

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Next Steps?

Review my content and material

Update my website design further

Refine my educational resources

Go through my literature review, questionnaire, and website content for spelling, grammar, etc. In addition to meeting the requirements of the course and final assignment.

The website is currently optimized for desktop viewing. I wanted to go in and optimize it for other devices and add in more visual elements, review the code, and look for errors.

Continue to refine and curate my educational resources. To include more resources based on the questionnaire responses, and others I continue to locate.