Alternative Assessment

Course Redesign Alternative Assessment

Getting Started: Considerations and Best Practice

When chang­ing an assess­ment or enhanc­ing an exist­ing one, there are steps to be con­sid­ered. The resources avail­able on Teach Any­where con­sis­tent­ly empha­size to start small. Per­haps you begin with adjust­ing a rubric or you replace an assess­ment that you inher­it­ed when you took over the course and that you feel does not accu­rate­ly eval­u­ate stu­dent learn­ing.

List of Helpful Resources

These pages about alter­na­tive assess­ment have been devel­oped with the 4 pil­lars of alter­na­tive assess­ment in mind.

Tips to Begin

The 4 pil­lars are indi­cat­ed in rel­e­vant areas through­out.

  • Hav­ing a strong ratio­nale for the change will be moti­vat­ing.
  • Ratio­nale can also be shared with stu­dents.
  • Clear­ly define the knowl­edge and skills stu­dents should demon­strate by the end of the course, and which relate to this assign­ment.
  • Deter­mine how the learn­ing out­comes align with course assess­ments or if updates or improve­ments may be required (this learn­ing out­come align­ment chart can assist). This is called con­struc­tive align­ment.
  • Deter­mine which of the learn­ing out­comes could be enhanced by inte­grat­ing an alter­na­tive assess­ment.
  • Deter­mine which of the learn­ing out­comes could be enhanced by inte­grat­ing an alter­na­tive assess­ment.

  More can be found about learn­ing out­comes on Teach Any­where.                 

  • Select an alter­na­tive method that best mea­sures the course learn­ing out­comes and that aligns with teach­ing and learn­ing activ­i­ties.
  • There are numer­ous exam­ples of alter­na­tive assess­ment with­in the teach any­where pages.
  • Reflect on the 4 pil­lars to help you choose.
  • CTLI can also help you with ideas and sug­ges­tions!
  • Pro­vide stu­dents with clear and suc­cinct cri­te­ria to help them under­stand what is expect­ed in the assess­ment.
  • Con­sid­er mak­ing a short Kaltura video to post on Bright­space that explains the assess­ment and expec­ta­tions.
  • Decide on how you will iden­ti­fy if the stu­dent has met the desired competencies/achieved the grade. Con­sult CTLI for feed­back and fur­ther sug­ges­tions.
  • Use rubrics or alter­nate mark­ing schemes that remove the empha­sis on a grade to pro­vide mean­ing­ful feed­back that sup­ports stu­dent growth
    (pil­lar #3: marks indi­cate progress).
  • Inte­grate ways that encour­age stu­dents to think about their own think­ing and learn­ing — Peer eval­u­a­tion and self-assess­ment, for exam­ple.
  • Con­sid­er the feed­back loop in the 4 pil­lars of assess­ment.
  • Review infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed about giv­ing and receiv­ing feed­back.
  • Con­sid­er pro­vid­ing class time to have stu­dents read the feed­back and discuss/ask for fur­ther clar­i­fi­ca­tion.
  • Guide stu­dents though the process, using clear and trans­par­ent lan­guage (pil­lar #1: Clear­ly defined stan­dards).
  • Gath­er feed­back from stu­dents, peers and your own reflec­tions to eval­u­ate and revise the assess­ment as need­ed for future use.
  • Scaf­fold assign­ments to encour­age resub­mis­sions or even bet­ter resub­mis­sions demon­strat­ing appli­ca­tion of feed­back (pil­lar #4: reassess­ment with­out penal­ty).
  • Stay informed on new alter­na­tive assess­ment ideas.
  • Con­sid­er enhancing/changing the assess­ment based on reflec­tion and feed­back

Top of Page

Learner Readiness + Professionalism Checklist

Par­tic­i­pa­tion marks are con­tro­ver­sial in post-sec­ondary edu­ca­tion are often con­tro­ver­sial due to their sub­jec­tive nature for both stu­dents and instruc­tors. Bain (2019) argues that instruc­tors should view par­tic­i­pa­tion grades as oppor­tu­ni­ties for “skill build­ing “ oppor­tu­ni­ties and offers strate­gies to help man­age this approach.

CTLI pro­vides an alter­na­tive to tra­di­tion­al par­tic­i­pa­tion grades, build­ing on Bain’s sug­ges­tions by encour­ag­ing stu­dents to self-assess their behav­ior on the class­room. The learn­er behav­ior check­list replaces instruc­tor – observed par­tic­i­pa­tion, shift­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty and account­abil­i­ty for behav­ior to the stu­dents. This way, any deduc­tion marks are made by the stu­dents them­selves, not the instruc­tor.

As Bain (2019) sug­gests, the check­list is pro­vid­ed at inter­vals through­out the semes­ter, allow­ing stu­dents ample time to iden­ti­fy chal­lenges and adjust. It also includes a sec­tion for reflec­tion to pro­mote metacog­ni­tion.

The check­list is pro­vid­ed here in a Word doc­u­ment, enabling instruc­tors to cus­tomize descrip­tions and cri­te­ria. Alter­na­tive­ly, this can be done as a large group activ­i­ty, involv­ing stu­dents in set­ting the cri­te­ria in the ear­ly part of the semes­ter.

Ungrading
Sep­a­rat­ing grades (val­ues, num­bers, per­cent­ages, lev­els, let­ters) from feed­back (ver­bal or writ­ten com­ments, direc­tions on where to improve, out­lin­ing strengths, sug­ges­tions for next steps) is the first step in ‘ungrad­ing’ your course. Ungrad­ing mean­ing rethink­ing the way we are putting val­ues on stu­dent learn­ing and crit­i­cal­ly reflect­ing on what grades are doing to stu­dent learn­ing — are they help­ing? are they fos­ter­ing the right con­text and cul­ture of growth and devel­op­ment? Once you see this sep­a­ra­tion and under­stand how grades (putting a val­ue on learn­ing) does­n’t aid in the learn­ing process, ungrad­ing prac­tices and ped­a­go­gies will become more clear. Ungrad­ing: Sep­a­rat­ing Grades from Feed­back — PDF Hand­out This hand­out pro­vides ideas on how to sep­a­rate grades from feed­back and build more stu­dent reflec­tion, metacog­ni­tion and ongo­ing feed­back into the stu­dent learn­ing expe­ri­ence. An Alter­na­tive Grad­ing Glos­sary — Link The fol­low­ing is a curat­ed col­lec­tion of read­ings, blogs, books, research arti­cles and oth­er writ­ings that explore what ungrad­ing means from var­i­ous view­points and dis­ci­plines and how it can be applied in the post-sec­ondary class­room (and still give a let­ter or num­ber for stu­dent tran­scripts!) Here are some instruc­tors who have writ­ten a num­ber of entries about their expe­ri­ences with alter­na­tive and ungrad­ing approach­es to stu­dent eval­u­a­tion. Maha Bali Maha is an Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor at the Cen­tre for Learn­ing & Teach­ing at the Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty in Cairo, Egypt. She is a full-time fac­ul­ty devel­op­er and edu­ca­tor teach­ing dig­i­tal lit­era­cies and inter­cul­tur­al learn­ing.
  • Bali, M. et. al. (Jan­u­ary 5, 2021) Alter­na­tive Approach­es to Grad­ing | Video
  • Bali, M. (March 23, 2019). Reflec­tions on Ungrad­ing for the Fourth Time | Blog post
  • Bali, M. (March 20, 2018). Ungrad­ing My Class — Reflec­tions on a Sec­ond Iter­a­tion | Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion Arti­cle
Susan Blum Susan is a pro­fes­sor of anthro­pol­o­gy at Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame. She’s been teach­ing col­lege stu­dents for over 30 years and for much of that time she was a con­ven­tion­al grad­er. Since around 2106 she has giv­en up grad­ing except for hand­ing in grades at the end of term.
  • Blum. S. (Decem­ber, 2020). Ed. Ungrad­ing: Why Rat­ing Stu­dents Under­mines Learn­ing (and What to do Instead)?| For­ward by Alfie Kohn | Book from West Vir­ginia Press
  • Blum sto­ry with­in arti­cle by Supi­ano, B. ( July 19, 2019). Grades Can Hin­der Learn­ing. What Should Pro­fes­sors Use Instead? | Web Page
  • Blum, S. (Novem­ber 14, 2017). Ungrad­ing: The sig­nif­i­cant learn­ing ben­e­fits of get­ting rid of grades. Inside High­er Ed. | Web Page
  • Blum, S. (Decem­ber 20, 2016). Liv­ing and Learn­ing with Risk: Against Rubrics and Grades. How “Ungrad­ing” Allowed my Stu­dents to Try Some New Things | Blog post
Cate Denial Cate Denial is the Bright Dis­tin­guished Pro­fes­sor of Amer­i­can His­to­ry, Chair of the His­to­ry depart­ment, and Direc­tor of the Bright Insti­tute at Knox Col­lege in Gales­burg, Illi­nois.
  • Denial, C. (Novem­ber 9, 2020). Ungrad­ing in a Pan­dem­ic | Blog Post
  • Denial, C. (Decem­ber 11, 2019). More Thoughts About Grades | Blog Post
  • Denial, C. (Octo­ber 16, 2017). Mak­ing the Grade | Blog Post
Lau­ra Gibbs  Lau­ra is an instruc­tor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Okla­homa where she joined in 1999. She’s been teach­ing ful­ly online cours­es since 2002. She teach­es gen­er­al edu­ca­tion cours­es in the human­i­ties.
  • Gibbs, L. (2020). Get­ting Rid of Grades | Book chap­ter in “Ungrad­ing Why Rat­ing Stu­dents Under­mines Learn­ing (and What to Do Instead)”  | Blog Post
  • Gibbs, L. (2016). (Un) Grad­ing: It can be done in col­lege | Guest post on Edu­ca­tion Week Teacher | Blog Post
  • Gibbs, L. (2016). Teach­ing: Ungrad­ing for More Feed­back. Per­son­al Blog Post found on site Anato­my of an Online Course | Blog Post
Claris­sa Sorensen-Unruh Since 2002, Claris­sa has been a full-time chem­istry instruc­tor at Cen­tral New Mex­i­co Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege. In her class­es she uses ungrad­ing, blogs and encour­ages open and engaged ped­a­go­gies. The sto­ry of all of her ungrad­ing expe­ri­ences are found on her main blog web­site at: https://clarissasorensenunruh.com/ungrading/
  • Sorensen-Unruh, C. (Jan­u­ary 14, 2020). Ungrad­ing: What is it and why should we use it | Blog post on ChemEd XChange
  • Sorensen-Unruh, C. (Jan­u­ary 3, 2020). Ungrad­ing: Pro­to­type II (Gen­er­al Chem­istry II) | Blog Post
  • Sorensen-Unruh, C. (Febu­rary 10, 2019). Ungrad­ing: A Series (Part 1) | Blog Post
Jesse Stom­mel Jesse Stom­mel has writ­ten some sem­i­nal blog posts on this top­ic over the past few years and has ungrad­ed his Eng­lish, dig­i­tal human­i­ties, film and com­mu­ni­ca­tions cours­es for decades. He is co-founder of Dig­i­tal Ped­a­gogy Lab and Hybrid Ped­a­gogy. Jesse has been an edu­ca­tor since 1999 and cur­rent­ly teach­es at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Den­ver.
  • Stom­mel, J. (2023). Ungrad­ing for Equi­ty | Blog Post
  • Stom­mel, J. (2023). Undo­ing the Grade: Why We Grade, and How to Stop. Hybrid Ped­a­gogy Inc., Den­ver, CO. Overview Post and Open Ver­sion
  • Stom­mel, J. (May 9, 2022). Ungrad­ing and Alter­na­tive Assess­ment | YouTube video of Pre­sen­ta­tion
  • Stom­mel, J. (Jan­u­ary 3, 2022). Com­pas­sion­ate Grad­ing Poli­cies | Blog Post
  • Stom­mel, J. (June 11, 2021). Ungrad­ing: An Intro­duc­tion | Blog Post
  • Stom­mel, J. (June 2, 2021). Grades are Dehu­man­iz­ing: Ungrad­ing is no Sim­ple Solu­tion | Blog Post
  • Stom­mel, J.  (March 3, 2020). What if We Did­n’t Grade? A Bib­li­og­ra­phy.  | Blog Post
  • Stom­mel, J. (Feb­ru­ary 6, 2020). Ungrad­ing: an FAQ.  | Blog Post
  • Stom­mel, J. (March 11, 2018). How to Ungrade | Blog Post
  • Stom­mel, J. (Octo­ber 26, 2017). Why I Don’t Grade | Blog Post

Peer Assessment

Self Assessment

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