One of our engrooved or deep-seated beliefs in higher education is that grades are important because they motivate students to do the work. Take them away, and students won’t do anything.
But oddly, for a discipline that says it relies on evidence-based research, there is little to no evidence or research that demonstrates that grades make students learn more or work harder. In fact, there is ample evidence that grades actually do the opposite: They hurt academic motivation and inhibit learning.
We’ve known for a long time, well before Covid, that the way we do assessment is damaged and creaking at the seams. But over what is now several decades of well-researched, evidence-based critiques of assessment, insitutions and academics are still assessing the same old way….with a few enhancing tweaks. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Covid started to point the way, and now GenerativeAI is providing the catalst and impetus we need to let go of outdated, obsolete practices that are well past their sell-by date, and embrace those that are genuuinely fit for purpose to meet the challenges we and our students face.
What we do know is that students – and we are all students, lifelong learners – work harder, learn more and are much more likely to thrive and achieve when we are intrinsically motivated. When we have some real autonomy, real choices. When we feel we are in control of our learning. It means being given meaningful choices and engaging, authentic tasks to choose from. It means feeling empowered to choose, as students, where to invest our time and energy. It also means feeling encouraged and supported even if that means, receiving feedback that is uncomfortable but honest and that comes from a good place.
Autonomy also means that our own autonomy, our own academic identity has to shift, from the keepers and transmitters of knowledge to facilitators of learning.
Also, we all like to feel we are continually growing, improving, developing new skills and understandings. Our own students are no different, so the question for us as teachers and assessors is how best can we focus both our and our students’ skills, time and energy on helping them build the skills they are genuinely motivated to learn and practise?
A sense of relatedness, a sense of genuine belonging is also critical. We desperately need to find ways of enabling our students to understand they are not just a number, not just cogs in a vast machine but valued as individuals and as part of a larger community… that they matter far more than their grades. If we can do that, they will respond and realise they don’t need the carrot and stick of grades, warning and penalties to care about their learning.
So…let’s leave grading to recede in the rear-view mirror, and focus on the road ahead and where that might lead.
Stumbling with Confidence 