The CTL is happy to assist Grinnell instructors interested in finding the grading methods that best support their learning goals. For many instructors, the range of practices described by the umbrella term “alternative grading” have become useful tools in supporting transparent, learning-focused conversations between educators and students.
Robert Talbert, a co-author of Grading for Growth, articulates four pillars of alternative grading that capture much of what the various approaches seek to build: clearly defined standards, helpful feedback, marks (grades) that indicate progress, and reattempts without penalty — all supporting an overarching emphasis on the benefits of feedback loops.
Methods of alternative grading include the following, which are often combined or adapted in the practices of any given teacher or course:
- Contract grading specifies clear expectations for each grade a student can earn, and the closely related labor-based grading involves students earning credit through the completion of steps in a process rather than evaluating the summative output of the process.
- Specifications grading outlines sets of assignments that students complete in order to earn a given grade. The grade stems from the number of assignments that the student has fully completed to a specified standard. The related practice of mastery-based grading involves giving students multiple or unlimited opportunities to attempt a task at the defined level of mastery before proceeding to the next task.
- Minimal grading replaces elaborate letter-based or numerical scales with simple scales such as a two-point scale of “done” and “needs revision.”
- Ungrading acknowledges that teachers mainly work within a system that requires the submission of grades, but it resists the traditionally hierarchical centering of the teacher’s critical judgment. In Undoing the Grade, Jesse Stommel emphasizes metacognition and self-evaluation as foundations for approaches “that engage students directly as experts in their own learning” (**).
All of these approaches emphasize the demystification of grading standards by providing students clear means by which to earn the grades they seek. As Stommel puts it, “To the extent that we can remove (or decenter) grades, we have to be sure we aren’t just shifting the goalposts for students, replacing clear policies with ‘hidden curriculum’” (**).
Many instructors are now becoming interested in these methods as a response to the influence of AI in student work. As Chris Wells argues in “The Inversion,” one effect of AI is to break the link between certain kinds of summative assessments (such as academic essays) and the underlying processes that generated them. Alternative grading can help us work with students to emphasize the values of learning in process, with a transparent articulation of what we value in that process.
Grinnell can provide access to its instructors with key resources in book form:
- David Clark and Robert Talbert, Grading for Growth, in the CTL resources library (hard copy) and through the Grinnell College libraries (electronic book)
- Linda B. Nilson and Joseph A. Packowski, Specifications Grading 2.0, in the CTL resources library (hard copy) and through the Grinnell College libraries (electronic book)
- Martin V. Covington, Linda Marie Von Hoene, and Dominic Jon Voge, Life Beyond Grades Life beyond Grades: Designing College Courses to Promote Intrinsic Motivation, coming soon to the CTL resources library (hard copy) and available through the Grinnell College libraries (electronic book)
- Jesse Stommel, Undoing the Grade: Why We Grade, and How We Stop, coming soon to the CTL resources library (hard copy) and to the Grinnell College libraries
Among the many excellent online introductions to alternative grading methods are Columbia University CTL’s Alternative Grading Approaches: Grading for Learning and the University of Virginia’s Teaching Hub page on Grading.