As a university professor for the past 25 years, I have grown increasingly skeptical of the utility of traditional grading systems.  The same A-B-C-D-F systems that America’s public school shave used since the early 19th Century are still in wide use in our colleges and universities today.  But traditional grading systems are not necessarily appropriate for the innovative pedagogies 21st Century universities are trying to encourage.

Consider the origins of school grades.  Until the 19th Century, private tutors and local schools were supposed to transform the children of wealthy families into ladies and gentlemen.  Their subjects included Latin, Greek, music, arts, mathematics, declamation, etc., but there was no vocational purpose and little need for grading academic performance. Teachers could always "incentivize" students with corporal punishment.

America’s free public school systems evolved and grew through the 19th Century to meet the diverse labor requirements of a rapidly industrializing economy.  White children would typically attend school through the 8th grade, and then join the workforce.  Black children might attend "colored" schools. Children from wealthier families—mostly white boys—would continue through high school.  Some of these would continue to colleges (boys) or normal schools (girls). 

The academic grading system that developed in America reflected new industrial age concerns for standards and quality control in mass production. Good grades certified intellectual accomplishment and promise.  Universities used grades to weed out large freshman classes.  Employers used grades to evaluate prospective hires.  Grades promoted student competition for academic recognition. Grading made American public schools more democratic, and the schools offered upward mobility to generations of citizens and immigrants. 

While the traditional approach to grading academic performance was clearly appropriate for an industrializing economy, I believe the development of newer collaborative learning pedagogies is impeded by reliance on traditional grading.

Most university faculty members will tell you that grading student work is one of the least enjoyable aspects of their jobs.  In all but the largest classes, you get to know and care about your students, yet you are supposed to remain unbiased when grading them.  Finding faults in your students’ work is unrewarding and reflects negatively on your own professional competence. 

Grading your own students is a conflict of interest.  A good instructor is a coach, and good coaches usually make lousy referees.  That's why university systems in many countries have a strict division of labor between teaching and assessment of learning.  The faculty members spend a semester or year working with students; then outside examiners write the exams and/or grade them. 

That's why most American universities have significant grade inflation.  As an instructor, you have mastered some body of knowledge that you love and are eager to teach to others.  So it is discouraging when students signal that they care more about the grade than the material you want them to master.  Students procrastinate on learning your material, cram just before the exam to earn an adequate grade, and then promptly forget the material.  You try to ration A’s, B’s, C’s, etc. based on some objective standard or statistical distribution.  Then you try to defend your grading when some grade-obsessed student challenges your objectivity and demands or begs for a better grade. The damn grades actually impede your pedagogy. They convert what should be a collaborative learning process into an oppositional relationship between student and teacher.

For over 20 years the University of Delaware has been encouraging faculty to explore alternative teaching methods.  UD has supported major initiatives in “problem-based learning" (PBL) where students develop functional mastery of a skill or subject by working through structured problems.  PBL is naturally paired with team learning, where students work in project groups, although PBL does not necessarily require student teams. 

One of the common elements in these alternative teaching methods is structured student-student and/or student-instructor collaboration.  The instructor assumes more of a coaching role.  The work assignments typically involve multiple steps or analytic stages, and may require students to integrate multiple skills.  The project may not have a single right answer.  The destination matters less than the path followed.  Collaborative learning skills are becoming essential in highly complex 21st Century workplaces.

In PBL with student teams, some students may do a lot more of the work than others.  When all team members expect the same project grade, there is an obvious incentive to “free ride” on the work of others. The instructor may end up refereeing disputes between team-members and parsing grades. Again, the grades may impede the pedagogy.

Over the past 15 years I have been restructuring my courses to individual PBL.  Each course syllabus offers a series of multi-stage problems in which learn and apply a series of analytic skills. The problems are complex, but structured so that students cannot go far wrong with them. You will know when your work is correct. The course syllabus is a simple contract: you complete the work, you get the A.   I will not decide your grade.  I will coach you as best I can, and you will decide your grade. 

As you go through this course, I hope you will reflect on the effectiveness of this instructional strategy.  Does it work for you?  If not, how should I alter it? 

Thanks for taking my class--I hope you enjoy it!

--John Mackenzie