The Four Pillars of Alternative Grading
Alternative grading systems are based on four key "pillars" that help them better represent learning and avoid many pitfalls of traditional grades. In this post, we introduce the four pillars and why they matter.
The variety of alternative grading approaches can be overwhelming. Instructors might say, I want to change my grading practice, but should I go with specifications grading? Standards-based grading? Ungrading? Contract grading? Most real-life approaches to alternative grading don’t fit neatly into any of those boxes, and often none of these general categories will be a perfect fit to your students in your classes. And how are we supposed to keep up with all these terms? Do you have to be an expert even to get started?
It seems smarter to focus on the overall ideas that unify these different approaches. So this week, rather than introduce another kind of grading practice, we’re going to pull back to a higher altitude and try to distill what all these ideas have in common and come up with a general framework for these practices. Not a “definition” of anything — there’s still too many idiosyncrasies and varied practices to hope for something that’s both precise and general — but instead a map, with room for interpretation, that stakes out some of the common ground that we seem to be walking together.