Student's thoughts on grades
After last week's meeting, I decided to ask my students their thoughts on grading and motivation for learning. After all, we are doing all of this for them, so why not get their opinions.
The comments are starting to roll in. Check it out here.
posted by Mwiebe @ 9:13 AM
6 Comments:
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Wow! Great job Mason! What did you think of the results? Do you still need more student input? How might these comments affect your future thinking about grades? What about playing Devil's Advocate by saying that you can assume by their remarks that they would work harder and learn more if you removed some/all grades for your next unit and they would more readily do their homework if there were no grades hanging over their heads. I hope the conversation continues and I would love to hear your reaction to them.
I struggle with how a grade looks. I love the idea of a responsiablity grade.
Grades and not the learning has overshadowed the learning.
We are help accountable for what they learn. We have to have the hard evidence to prove that we are doing our jobs.
So many questions and so many answers?
Mason
Mason,
The comments the kids made were very thought provoking. I think that we don't allow students to take responsibility for their own learning and that grades don't reflect their ability or what they can do. It is a challenge to find ways to get students to buy in beyond just getting a grade. When they see the relevance they are motivated by their grade, not by the learning itself. I really like talking about grades because I have felt so bogged down with grading that there has to be another way to give students feedback.
When I was in school, grades (unfortunately) represented a kind of all-seeing eye for me. Let me explain. Like many students, I always had a hard time engaging in meaningful self-reflection and evaluation. I was never very comfortable with myself, so I was always looking for ways to understand myself based on the external feedback that I received. Of all of the hundreds of forms of external feedback that exist for students, grades are often the most easily decoded. As a result, I often felt like my self-worth was determined by the kinds of grades I was receiving. This is unfortunate for several reasons. The one I want to point out is that when students care this much about grades, grades become the end purpose of education. When this happened for me, I lost much of the inherent joy that came with learning. It wasn't until college that I rediscovered how much joy could come with learning. That is why I think it important that when we talk about grades to students, we help them understand that grades are a means to an end, and not an end to themselves. I try to help students separate their feelings of self-worth from their academic evaluations.
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