(519c) Adventures in Ungrading: A Four-Year Effort to Find Optimal Conditions for Promoting Student Achievement and Supporting Student Happiness

Ungrading refocuses the emphasis of a course onto learning and the mastery that students should have achieved at the end of the course, as opposed to students focusing on achieving certain grades and defining their success on the grade. In general, grades are de-emphasized for greater focus on students learning, processing, and applying the instruction in the course, through means such as greater levels of feedback and discussion with each other and the instructor. Many approaches fall under the broader umbrella of ungrading, including contract grading, mastery-based grading, portfolios, and self-assessment, but the general approach allows an instructor to provide less stressful, more equitable assessment.

Over four years of teaching Process Control at Northeastern University, ungrading assessment approaches have been implemented using a portfolio-based method while the conditions of its implementation have been repeatedly changed in search of optimal conditions for promoting student mastery as well as allowing for student comfort and approval with the means of assessment. Various approaches have included no deadlines, requiring some intermediate work submission, introducing point totals for each completed exercise, and shifting towards a blend of ungrading and standards-based grading in determining mastery. This presentation will discuss the outcomes of each approach including student responses to each approach and demonstrated mastery achieved in each, and will offer recommendations on how others can implement ungrading in their own instruction.