A series outlining my concerns with the “two-lane” approach to assessment security. Here, I explain the ways in which it exacerbates the myth of meritocracy and deepens inequity in education.
This is an excellent essay. Thank you! Your endnote encapsulates the main issue: "We assess students’ performance, not their learning. Our assessments don’t tell us when or where or how they learned what they’re performing; only whether they are performing it." Indeed. We need to keep this in mind, especially in courses outside the humanities, where the performance seems to be an even bigger deal. If we want to motivate students to learn, we must focus on learning and deprioritize grades and their performance on singular, formal assignments.
I really appreciate you always Christa :) I think the movement towards ungrading is growing stronger, richer and more urgent every day now. I hope to read, learn and celebrate more about it.
As I write these, I'm getting persistent calls for answers: "ok, what should we do then?" I know these are partly rhetorical, and partly calls for other suggestions to tighten assessment security. But I feel more and more strongly that it's grades, not insecurity, that's the heart of this problem.
Absolutely. The reality of grades engenders all sorts of anxieties and performance issues. I think we should spend our energies addressing those anxieties and what causes them, rather than policing the tool that keeps the anxieties in place and makes students feel like they somehow can beat the system. It's also clear that we're placing the burden of a grading system we have created *on our students.* And then these companies offer them a tool to beat the system, but the burden is on students to make sure they check the output and remain accountable for the mistakes LLMs make.... It's all very maddeningly wrong!
This is an excellent essay. Thank you! Your endnote encapsulates the main issue: "We assess students’ performance, not their learning. Our assessments don’t tell us when or where or how they learned what they’re performing; only whether they are performing it." Indeed. We need to keep this in mind, especially in courses outside the humanities, where the performance seems to be an even bigger deal. If we want to motivate students to learn, we must focus on learning and deprioritize grades and their performance on singular, formal assignments.
I really appreciate you always Christa :) I think the movement towards ungrading is growing stronger, richer and more urgent every day now. I hope to read, learn and celebrate more about it.
As I write these, I'm getting persistent calls for answers: "ok, what should we do then?" I know these are partly rhetorical, and partly calls for other suggestions to tighten assessment security. But I feel more and more strongly that it's grades, not insecurity, that's the heart of this problem.
Absolutely. The reality of grades engenders all sorts of anxieties and performance issues. I think we should spend our energies addressing those anxieties and what causes them, rather than policing the tool that keeps the anxieties in place and makes students feel like they somehow can beat the system. It's also clear that we're placing the burden of a grading system we have created *on our students.* And then these companies offer them a tool to beat the system, but the burden is on students to make sure they check the output and remain accountable for the mistakes LLMs make.... It's all very maddeningly wrong!