Ungrading: Reflection Post #6 (Ch2: What Going Gradeless Taught Me About Doing the 'Actual Work', by Aaron Blackwelder), part 3

As part of some professional learning I want to do this year, I'm reading Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead), edited by Susan D. Blum. As I did w/ Feldman's Grading for Equity (first post here), I'll be blogging my way through it, to help me process and share my thinking as it evolves. I'm always pumped to learn with others about this stuff, so get at me on Twitter @BearStMichael if you want to talk about any of this!

Feedback and Revision

For the most part, I consider the majority of the feedback in my classes to be “in time.” This feedback either comes in conversations between me and students, students and other students, or students and the math itself (see Dan Meyer and the Team Desmos’ discussion on ‘interpretive feedback’). But very rarely (pretty much never?) do I look at student work, make comments about it, and return it to them with the expectation that they interpret and understand what I said, and use it for future progress.

What I do instead is:

—> Assess

—> learning activity not directly connected to the assessment, but about the same stuff

—> Re-assess.

My theory is that if learning is happening, it should transfer to improved performance on assessments. I’m generally worried that if I’m focused on coaching students on how to perform on the assessments specifically, their increase in performance will be a reflection of them better understanding the arbitrary design of the assessment, and not necessarily a reflection of any abstract transferrable understanding.

I still believe that theory, however over time I appreciate more and more how that transfer demand is a non-trivial lurking variable when it comes to “collecting data” about what students “know.” And that lurking variable presents an inequity.

Direct concrete feedback about work that you have done feels valuable for learners. And not just evaluative feedback, like my quiz grades. I just assume students will understand what the grade I give them means for them and their arc of learning. It’s kind of like students are running around trying different things to learn and show what they’ve learned, and I’m just telling them “hot” or “cold.” Thinking about it that way, it’s pretty clear that grades are a poor substitute for direct, concrete feedback.

The open question here, then, is how to provide that feedback sustainably, given that I have 110 students, and basically zero time to provide such feedback. I don't think there's a quick answer to that one, but instead a constantly developing, increasingly sophisticated, toolbox of strategies and big ideas.