Bad Data Are Not Better Than No Data: a guide for radically inserting ourselves in decisions about educational technologies

A new piece in @AAUP’s #Academe by me and @mburtis: https://www.aaup.org/article/bad-data-are-not-better-no-data

"There's no magic solution to the issue of equity in education. It has to be constantly under revision because our students are changing, we're changing, and our contexts are changing."

Click to hear my recent conversation with @AlSolano@edumasto.org for the Student Success Podcast https://www.continuous-learning-institute.com/blog/undoing-the-grade-with-dr-jesse-stommel

My new book is available in print, ebook, and fully open-access versions. You can read the introduction here. https://hybridpedagogy.org/undoing-the-grade/

We'll be joined by @mburtis, who wrote the foreword to my new book. She writes, "After years of figuring out how to make ungrading work, I’ve learned one thing: it isn’t actually about grades. It is about the things that grades stand in for." https://pressbooks.pub/thegrade/front-matter/foreword/

Open Online Office Hours: Ungrading Edition

I'm hosting a conversation tomorrow at Noon eastern. I don’t promise easy answers, but I will work with those who show up to find creative, compassionate solutions — and likely more questions.

Click to RSVP. https://www.jessestommel.com/open-online-office-hours-ungrading-edition/

What is ungrading? Why and how might academics use it?

Join us this Thursday as the Future Trends Forum hosts Jesse Stommel to explore:
https://shindig.com/login/event/stommel
#FTTE
@Jessifer

Ungrading is an equitable practice because grades do harm. And marginalized students are the students most harmed by grades. Finding ways to reduce that harm, and to begin to dismantle grades as a system, is imperative if equity or justice is our goal. https://www.jessestommel.com/ungrading-for-equity/

"Grades are an invention with very specific sociohistorical motivations and effects. Conversations about grades are, ultimately, conversations about power, which is why they are so often fraught, especially given how many of us have specific traumatic experiences of both grading and being graded." https://www.jessestommel.com/toward-a-co-intentional-approach-to-assessment/

@dgodon Alfie Kohn’s work is a huge inspiration.

A wonderful foreward to @Jessifer's new book on ungrading, by the CoLab's own @mburtis: https://colab.plymouthcreate.net/2023/08/16/foreword-to-undoing-the-grade/

Educators, read this! by @Jessifer
#pedagogy #learning #education

Hybrid Pedagogy is proud to announce publication of Undoing the Grade: Why We Grade, and How to Stop by Jesse Stommel. This book represents over 20 years of thinking and writing about grades. The work of ungrading is to ask hard questions, point to the fundamental inequities of grades, and push for structural change. Undoing the Grade offers pedagogies and practices that make assessment more equitable

https://hybridpedagogy.org/undoing-the-grade/

My new book, Undoing the Grade, just came out today. You can read an excerpt at Hybrid Pedagogy. The book represents over 20 years of my thinking and writing about grades.

"Grades and assessment are elephants in almost every room where discussions of education are underway."

https://hybridpedagogy.org/undoing-the-grade/

“Ungrading is a systemic critique. The problem of conflating ungrading with ‘not grading’ is that it ignores the precarity of teachers and the labor issues in education, reframing grades as a moral issue, instead of a structural one.”

A new piece from me about what ungrading is and the barriers teachers (and students) face in doing this work. Published in Zeal: A Journal for the Liberal Arts: https://www.jessestommel.com/do-we-need-the-word-ungrading/

Grading less is about stopping practices that do harm. It isn’t necessarily about adding new practices.

The harder part of ungrading is the way it asks us to question the assumptions we make about school, learning, motivation, etc. The harder part of grading less is the way it pushes against conventions that feel (but usually aren’t) immovable.

At the start, reimagining our approaches takes time and emotional labor. But, to be direct, grading less is less work. There is other work we can do in place of grading, but we can also remove grades and replace them with trust. Trust scales.

One of the things most precarious for contingent/adjunct teachers is our time. For years, I taught up to 9 classes at 4 institutions. My alternative pedagogies were developed as much from a place of care for students as they were developed from a place of care for me.

Some strategies that work for me: (1) I make sure my pedagogical approaches are well-researched; (2) I bring students into conversation about my approaches; (3) I figure out what the firm rules are and follow them. We usually internalize more restrictions than there actually are.

Each institution where I’ve worked has had a different set of norms and structures. Navigating those hurdles (and cultures) has always been a challenge. Yet I’ve always expected myself to push back (where I could) when I’ve seen harm done to students. I’ve had to be careful.

As a teacher, I feel like it’s my job to advocate for students — to stand in the gap between students and institutional policies that do harm. But I am also precarious, so I’m left to rely on administrators and colleagues to stand in the gap for me.

The work of teaching is increasingly precarious and the ability of teachers to carve our own paths through the work is under threat. Academic freedom (like the ability to make critical decisions about our teaching practices) must extend to precarious teachers.