UnGrading

Over the last two years, the University Writing Program hosted several highly successful book groups focused on exciting new books about teaching and writing. For Spring 2022, we invite you to participate in a new ONLINE group focused on Susan Blum’s (2020, WVU Press) Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead).  


Blum has assembled fifteen educators across disciplines and instructional contexts (high school, community college, and university) who reflect on their experiences moving away from grades-focused teaching in order to better support students as active and engaged learners.Rather than simply hawk the “big new thing,” these authors discuss both their struggles and successes with implementing pedagogies that move away from mere ranking and sorting of students, and they provide theoretical and practical advise for how other teachers might make similar moves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reviewers Write:

Ungrading is a close, collegial, and engaging book that brings a deep reflection into our assessment models, practices, and experiences. Most importantly, it incentivizes us to visualize a ‘what if’ scenario, acknowledging the tensions and challenges experienced by instructors who have reduced or eliminated grades almost ubiquitous presence in the educational system.
– Beatriz Moya, International Journal for Educational Integrity
In Ungrading, a baker’s dozen of professors and elementary and secondary educators offer up their experiences and insights about the vast educational benefits of forsaking traditional grading. From a diverse range of fields, they tell us what worked for them, where they failed, and what their students have said. One of the main things that comes through in each of the disparate essays is something that seems as if it should go without saying: These teachers trust their students. They believe that students want to learn. And they feel that grades are not a good motivational tool and are often at odds with real learning.
– Rachel Toor, Chronicle of Higher Education
I love this book. It undermines the mythology around grading, helping us understand that (a) grading is a construction, and a relatively recent one at that, and (b) we’d be better off without it—as would our students.
– Paul Hanstedt, author of Creating Wicked Students: Designing Courses for a Complex World
Ungrading: The Book Trailer

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