Bonni Stachowiak [00:00:00]:

Today on episode number 511 of the Teaching in Higher Ed Podcast, using alternative grading practices to foster growth with David Clark.Production Credit: Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:00:21]:

Welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. I’m Bonni Stachowiak, and this is the space where we explore the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning. We also share ways to improve our productivity approaches, so we can have more peace in our lives and be even more present for our students. David Clark is back to Teaching in Higher Ed. He’s an associate professor in the department of mathematics at Grand Valley State University. David earned his PhD in 2012 at Michigan Technological University. He shares research, advice, and stories about alternative grading through his blog and book, both named grading for growth, along with his coauthor, Robert Talbert. Beyond assessment, David studies discrete mathematics, especially via undergraduate research projects.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:01:26]:

He serves on the senior staff for Math Path, a month long residential enrichment program for middle school students. He is also an avid backpacker and board gamer. David Clark, welcome back to Teaching in Higher Ed.

David Clark [00:01:42]:

Thank you for having me again.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:01:44]:

When Robert Talbert was on the show recently, he helped us with 4 pillars that you and your coauthor Robert used in grading for growth and really keeps you grounded and rooted. And I’m gonna ask you some follow-up questions that we didn’t have time to delve into as much with him, starting with the first one, clearly defined standards. How do you, David, over time iterate on these standards? Because it’s not like they’re clear and then we are done and our work work here is finished, and we can finish the laundry or something like that.

David Clark [00:02:20]:

Absolutely. Yeah. That’s an important thing to remember in general is that us as faculty, we’re engaging in our own feedback loops. Right? We’re iterating through teaching and learning and understanding what our students need. And so, yeah, I’m constantly reevaluating what my clearly defined standards are. And I think the the most important thing I can say for that is as you’re teaching a class and using alternative grading, for the first time or for the the nth time, however big n is, take notes, right, about was that did that work? Did these standards make sense? Did something feel out of order? Was something too broad or too narrow? Anything that you notice in the moment and you think, oh, I’ll remember that, then take a note about that and just adjust those standards. And that can lead to little changes or big changes. But that, as part of the reflective practice, can also lead to even bigger things.

David Clark [00:03:16]:

So when I’m looking at from year to year or from semester to semester, like, what standards am I using and am I happy with this list in a certain class, I’m often thinking about things like, okay. Does does this represent what I really care about? Or am I getting comfortable with it, but comfort is not necessarily the same as what really matters? Right? Have things shifted in my teaching or in where I could what I care to emphasize? Do I really wanna teach that one standard, or is that just a thing that maybe we do in class, and I’m happy with it? So those are the types of questions that you can ask yourself. Right? How important is this? Do I wanna keep doing this? Is it too specific, too broad? Any of those types of things. But and and just never stop thinking about that. Never think that your list of standards is perfect because you change, your students change, the class changes, the world around us changes, and that makes a difference.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:04:08]:

Can you talk about what might prompt you to take notes? Is it because something didn’t go as expected? Or is this a discipline that you have on a on a regular basis that’s instilled in your habits?

David Clark [00:04:19]:

Right. So it is absolutely part of my habits to just take notes about each each class. And sometimes it’s it’s a single phrase. Right? And sometimes the phrase is great. And but an example of a note that I took really recently on my own list of standards from one class that I teach is it was just said, flip l 2 and l 3. So l 2 and l 3 are the names of 2 standards. And I realized as we were working on something and I was writing a quiz that we encounter those in the opposite order from what I had put them on the list. And it’s a really minor thing, but when a student is looking at my list of standards, they’re kinda going from top to bottom.

David Clark [00:04:55]:

This is the order that things happen in and, oh, that was out of order. So a very minor thing. A bigger one I’ve done recently is I a couple of semesters ago, I just drew a big x through an entire category of my standards and said, you know what? I don’t want to be assessing these. It’s a thing we’re gonna do in class, and I care about it, but it’s not something I’m gonna assess. And that’s often true for things that are sort of habits of mind and, things that would maybe fall under the, what’s the phrase I’m looking for here? The unspoken curriculum, the hidden curriculum, where, like, I want to help my students understand these things, and I am not gonna assess them at all. I want them just to engage and experience and be aware.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:05:35]:

And the second pillar that that Robert reintroduced us to recently is helpful feedback. And I get so much joy out of when I experience those feedback loops, and I’m I’m fascinated by them. I also get so much frustration. So I know my own failures are often related to some aspect of feedback loops, but what are you hearing from faculty that you get a chance to work with? And in your own work, where do we sometimes struggle with feedback loops? What what are some of the patterns that you notice there?

David Clark [00:06:06]:

Right. So we call it helpful feedback. Right? And that’s, it’s it’s kinda easy. Most of us are used to giving feedback in some way, but making it helpful is the tough part. And something that I find a lot, and I see this in myself as well, is that there’s we’ve built up these muscles in giving feedback that is sort of justification for why you lost a point or you you know, something didn’t work out or whatever. And so it’s it’s backwards looking. Right? It’s saying, well, you know, I I took off this point because this thing had to happen or whatever, as opposed to, okay, this is what happened, and now I’m gonna give you feedback to help you engage with and understand the thing I want you to. And it’s kind of a subtle shift, but a lot a lot of us, myself included, are so used to giving that backwards looking feedback that it’s not as helpful then.

David Clark [00:06:58]:

And so to think, okay, I’m gonna give this feedback with the understanding the student needs to be able to use it. So it can be fairly direct about what needs to happen as opposed to what already happened. And so helpful in that way, helpful knowing that it’s meant to be used, helpful knowing that students will have an opportunity to use it so that they actually can act on it, and helpful being specific. Students are still learning even if they’re in the midst of the assessment process. And they often need more specificity about what is it that needs to be done as opposed to a general, well, your writing needs to be clearer. Right? That’s that’s not in terms of the standards that we care about. It’s not specific in them. So all of those are they require a lot of practice and feedback loops on the faculty member’s part as well, and I’m still working on that, and hopefully getting better.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:07:48]:

I had lunch yesterday with my mom and Dave, my husband, and she was chatting about that my brother recently showed her in the Duolingo language learning app how to add an additional language. I guess she had been learning along with my brother German, and he had showed her how easy it is to add a new thing. So she added Ukrainian, which I thought was fascinating because that’s not a language that anyone in our family’s ever spoken. And talking to her about, you know, what was it that intrigued you about that language and such. And she mentioned just really being wanting to learn a language where the the it was so different because she learned the romance languages when she was in college, etcetera. And as she’s talking, she was just sort of in a self deprecating way, feeling I I don’t wanna I don’t wanna ascribe a feeling, but just just, like, how how silly is it or how frivolous is it that, you know, here’s this little thing, and I get these little indicators that I’ve done something well. And then she was also talking about when she doesn’t, and and sometimes struggling with not wanting to wanting to fail and and and just what that experience is like to fail even though it’s just this just this little app. It’s not like someone out there is keeping score on her, you know, beyond the app.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:09:01]:

But it got me thinking so much because I Dave been asking for about two and a half, three years now. I’ll I’ll sort of do a supplemental 75% of the way through a class feedback with from the students to what extent did you feel like I cared about you as a student, and what was something specific that I did that that caused that perception. And a lot of times what they’ll tell me, if early Bonni, it was early on in COVID, it was flexibility on deadlines. And then in the more recent years, it has been feedback. And, David, I’m telling you, my feedback, it’s not that it’s that uniquely helpful. It’s really, to me, I would characterize more than half of what I do is just that they know there’s somebody there on the other side that isn’t a bot, isn’t AI, isn’t, you know, Duolingo, that that’s not an actual person giving that feedback. So to what extent have you come across feedback that’s helpful because it’s coming from a human being?

David Clark [00:10:02]:

That that’s a really good question. And I have to say it’s not something I’ve thought too much about because most of the time, I’m working with people who are going to be giving feedback. Right? So by default, it’s gonna

Bonni Stachowiak [00:10:11]:

be a Who’s a human being?

David Clark [00:10:13]:

But there is a lot of, you know, there’s a lot of discussion about things like auto grading and, like, what kind of feedback can we give through auto grading. And, like, there’s no question that students understand that that feedback is different. Right? Like, they they put less stock in it. They understand it can go awry. Or even if it doesn’t, they they may think it does. But I I think what you’re getting at is, like, a fundamental important thing about teaching is that human connection. Right? So, obviously, I think alternative grading is this great idea. It’s really important.

David Clark [00:10:41]:

But, like, it can’t be ahead of just establishing relationships with students and letting them know that you care and that your feedback that you’re giving, like, it’s because you really do genuinely want them to learn this stuff and improve and and stuff like that. Like, it’s not a mechanical process. And if students see that you have that empathy and that that sort of connection, that goes so far to, like, taking care of of the types of of concerns that people have about alternative grading or active learning or or anything in a classroom.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:11:16]:

Last semester, I had a student I was fairly sure was using AI. And I say that somewhat sarcastically because when it comes with, I can’t perform this function for you, you kinda can pretty much guess that’s who you’re dealing with here. But I really worked hard on thinking about what is what are the clearly defined standards that I’m assessing in those assignments and attempting not to have the opposite of the halo effect happen where I get triggered somehow because how dare you not treat the person on the other side of the screen as, you know, as well as you should be, etcetera, and would provide feedback of of it appears to me that this is not giving the context. I asked about the context for you specific to your life. I care about your life, and that’s what I’m looking for here is to hear about your specific life and and would attempt to, in advance, have decided how much would it matter if I didn’t get the context that I asked for, etcetera, versus trying to be really judgmental. There’s, lots of game show like quizzes that we can take these days that will help us see how bad we are as professors at large at really assessing whether or not something was written by a I I AI. By the way, we are not particularly good at it for those of you those of you listening.

David Clark [00:12:29]:

I Dave failed a few of those recently, in fact. Yes.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:12:32]:

Yeah. Yeah. So I I think one thing that your work and Robert’s work has helped me with so much is through that feedback, I got to have the experience at the end of using not only alternative grading approaches, but also an alternative assignment where they were in a team project. And then in this particular case, it wasn’t a written response. They were recording a presentation, to culminate their group project, and it was so fun to go. I actually think the feedback loops that I have there, I think I managed to keep my bias somewhat at bay, and I got to see what happens when it works right. So I’d love to have you share, David, if you can think of a story where you just go, it doesn’t didn’t feel like it was working at the time, but you got to have that happy ending even if it was just for a moment. Maybe another example of feedback loops that work well.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:13:23]:

What what do they look like when they’re designed well?

David Clark [00:13:25]:

Okay. So so this is where my brain went right away. It’s it’s maybe it’s an answer to your question, but I think it’s it’s an important thing. I don’t remember how long ago. I I had this idea in a certain class I teach where students put together a portfolio at the end that I was gonna ask them a couple of, like, really short questions. Just tell me a little bit about these things at with your view looking back across the whole semester. And one of them was fill in the blank. I really appreciated blank because blank.

David Clark [00:13:55]:

And I think I was specific, like, the it needed to be a person’s name in the class, like a student’s name in the class. I really appreciated this person because and I am I I keep using this because I’m just amazed at the things that I learned about my class that I never knew. Like, even with all the feedback, all the time that I talk with students and try to really understand what’s going Bonni, There’s just all these things going on behind the scenes, right, when students are meeting with each other and talking or whatever. And so I’ve learned that, like, these students who I did not realize even knew each other are, like, supporting each other and were helping each other meaningfully and understanding assignments and and really digging deeply into what was going on in the class. And I just never knew it. Right? And it for me, a big thing that that question has done is it just adds more humanity to this final assessment process. Where, you know, at the end of the semester, there are final grades, and it can feel like even in the most wonderful class, it can actually, to me, feel kind of depressing to assign those final grades and do that final summative. Well, here’s a one letter for the entire semester.

David Clark [00:15:05]:

And knowing that even students where I might have looked and said, I think they’re really struggling or maybe I, I don’t know if you’re getting this, buddy. That, like, they were trying and they were doing such real, genuine work that I couldn’t see. I I just there was no way for me to see it. That has happened actually several times. And it it’s sort of heartwarming. It also makes me realize just how arbitrary so much of, like, the final grade process is. So which is a whole another topic. Right?

Bonni Stachowiak [00:15:35]:

Yeah. I have this sign that hangs in my office, which is a it’s it’s in reference to an author who sadly has passed away, but the sign reads show up for the work, and Rachel Held Evans used to have that above her writing desk. And show up for the work to me means it says a lot about vulnerability and also about that we’re not always gonna show up. If if I, like, if I tried to do this podcast for almost 10 years as of talking with you today, like, if I had tried to always show up given the best podcast I could imagine, I I could Dave never shown up to the sit in front of and and and do that. So but, anyway, another big thing that that could be another sign I would hang maybe is make the work visible. And I kinda got happy recently because I’d start hearing more people say it besides me. And I’m like, yay. It’s it’s actually catching on, you know, when you have that thing.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:16:23]:

But your story is so emblematic of what happens when instead of us trying to just fall into the temptation of telling, telling, showing, showing, you know, that it’s coming from us and how much pressure we can put on ourselves. And you’ve invited them to share about the part that we might not be able to see as well, You know, make the work visible. Let let’s see that same kind of humanity you shared about, the same kind of vulnerability, but you’re getting to see those glimpses of the student to student in a new way. That’s such a powerful story.

David Clark [00:16:56]:

And there’s some other ways to get glimpses of that too because thinking about it, I started trying to figure that out more because I’m like, you know, this this matters. It tells me things about the students and what they know and and what’s working and what isn’t. And part of that actually is something I always recommend for reassessments without penalty, which is that a reassessment always needs some reflective parts, some metacognition, because that’s part of the feedback loop. Right? It’s stopping to think about what you’re doing and then using that to improve what you’ve done, not just trying again blindly. But when you ask students for reflection, like, it can go a number of ways and sometimes you sort of get this mechanical, this is what I changed and this is how it went. And if if you’re successful, and sometimes I am, in convincing them, like, really no. I really wanna know, like, what was your process or what were you thinking about as you were doing this? And they’re honest about it. I really get an insight into a student’s thought process and just like what their world is.

David Clark [00:17:55]:

Why are they working this way and what do they care about and what matters and all those little glimpses add up and and there are real people. Right? We’re real people. Humans are are students are real people.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:18:06]:

Yeah. So another you just brought up another of your 4 pillars, the reassessment without penalty. And I try not to make this all rating myself. I don’t wanna berate myself. I don’t think that’s that interesting for other people to listen to, but I’ve got reassessment without penalty down with the huge exception that you just talked about. So speaking of it being mechanical, what I typically have been doing is allowing for reassessment without penalty. I say clumsily only because I don’t track it very well, so I’m not I’m not super strict about feeling like people will take advantage of that. In my experience, they just haven’t because of the types of ways I structure things.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:18:41]:

But I find myself I have to go I should say, I choose to go. I inadvertently set myself up to need to go back and see what changed. Did did they make that correction to have it meet the standards that as outlined? And that just seems so silly because that’s both a waste of time, but I’m also missing this huge opportunity that you just described to learn about what that process was. So not only could I hear from them what changes did they make, which I imagine is probably an important piece that I am missing, But then also this this reflection that you’re talking about, and I’m glad that you’re sharing because I definitely could have made it feel mechanical. So tell us more about how we cannot have it feel mechanical. So in terms of what I just described for you, I think I’ve got the part reassessment without penalty, but what else do I need to know about making it that much more effective for the learning process?

David Clark [00:19:38]:

Yeah. It so the the reflective part is really critical, but there’s so many ways you can do it. And I guess I’ll say I don’t recommend asking the question of what did you change? Because often you’ll get a bullet point list of here’s all the changes I made. Okay. Actually, I didn’t wanna know that. Yeah. Like Yeah. You know, it matters what changed.

David Clark [00:19:56]:

So I sometimes ask a question like, what is the one major change you made? Like, stop and actually think about in the big picture, you did a bunch of things. What was the main thing? And another question I like asking is, what is something important that you learned from this? And the thing that’s amazing to me is how often a student they’re not telling me because I’m a mathematician. They’re not saying, here’s a mathematical thing that I learned from this process. They’re saying, I learned that I need to reread my work. I I learned that I need to read this thing out loud. I need learned that I need to be careful about reading an instruction or But the, yeah, the reflection or doing something that isn’t assessed, but is somehow helping the students use the feedback along the way. So sometimes in in intro level classes, I’ve had students have access to, like, online homework because we were talking about auto grading and automatic feedback. And that kinda makes me a little uncomfortable.

David Clark [00:20:56]:

Like, yes, practice matters, but how do I count this? And I came to the realization that, oh, actually, that sort of auto graded homework is perfect as an intermediate step between 2 different things that I want to assess carefully. They try it. They don’t succeed in whatever way. I give them feedback. And then I say, okay. Before you can try again, I need you to go try some of this online homework as just practice. Right? Just try the thing and try to use the feedback I had. And then when you need to reassess, then that’ll give you a better sense of where you need to be focusing.

David Clark [00:21:31]:

And so it unlocks the door to reassessment by just giving them that little extra time to think and process and try and see if it worked before they do the one that counts. Right? And those are those are all, like, different processes I’ve used. Right? You know, the written reassessment or the written reflection process or the online homework process or the, like, come talk with me and just convince me that there’s something that needs to be changed to your process. And all of them can take time, which is a big thing, and so you can get buried under this avalanche of reassessments. I don’t know if you’ve run into that yet where, like, a bunch of them all come at the same time and suddenly you’ve got a whole bunch of extra work. So also thinking carefully just about the timing of that. Like, students need time to think about what they’re doing when they’re going to reassess and reflect on it. But you need time to be able to do the to grade the reassessment, to understand and think about it.

David Clark [00:22:21]:

And so having that gap of time where we can’t just try again right away but gotta think about it, It saves you time. It saves the students’ efforts. It it’s useful all around.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:22:31]:

Boy, your example to me is compelling because it I’m going all the way back to my mother learning new languages with Duolingo that that that tool there I I tend to sometimes bristle at their use, but it’s because it’s so often used of like, oh, look. We have to work less or, you know, like that. It feels like it’s it’s cheating a student out of an experience with a relationship with someone who cares about them and about their academic success and and thriving. And and but yet, if I were taking your math class and I was struggling and by the way, David, I probably would be struggling because this is an area I have I have struggled with so many of the stereotypes of people growing up and all that and bought into some of that and had to work on my growth mindset in this area. But if if it came to me as in the way you just described it, I wouldn’t perceive it as you’re trying to distance yourself from me as an educator, but I would still see, oh, here’s a helpful thing I could do because I need a little bit more practice. And assuming that that we have selected tools that are effective at doing that and really spend the time there to find the right tool that will help people fail, try again, and and and all of that. Like like, she talked about so much at that lunch yesterday, I would mention that.

David Clark [00:23:50]:

Mhmm. And that type of assessment, I mean, it it actually is something that I think that things like Duolingo do very well is it’s targeted reassessment. Right? It’s not everybody in this class, all of you go do the same online homework assignments all at once. It’s, oh, you’ve demonstrated that you need to practice this, and you know it and I know it. So okay. Go do it. And then then let’s check out where you’re at. Like, it’s not the end of the story yet either.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:24:13]:

Yeah. Alright. So the one that we didn’t talk about, the pillar we haven’t talked about yet is the one that talks about that the marks indicate progress. What are some of the common mistakes that we might make with this particular pillar?

David Clark [00:24:27]:

So marks what marks Dave sense for you is such a personal thing. Like, I’ve gone through many different variations on this. Nowadays, I’m mainly using something that goes, successful, revisable, needs new, attempt, or needs new, whatever we’re doing. So partly finding just what makes sense for you in terms of the verbs you’re using or the description you’re using. But, actually, where I see sort of the biggest trouble that people run into is when you’re assigning a mark to indicate progress, like, there’s sort of a top level. There’s a you’ve met the requirements level. And this also connects to your clearly defined standards. What are those requirements, and have you met them? And if that standard, if the if the successful mark basically means perfection, it means, like, okay, there’s nothing I could comment on.

David Clark [00:25:19]:

There’s no feedback I could give. That’s actually harmful because insisting on perfection is basically saying everything matters equally. Like, if there is any kind of error, any kind of issue, too bad. You’re out. Right? You have not succeeded. And students understand just as well as faculty if you’re saying successful, it doesn’t mean perfect. It doesn’t mean flawless. It doesn’t mean there’s nothing more you could do.

David Clark [00:25:51]:

A way I like to think about it is this tells me that you understand at a level where when you inevitably need to think about it again in the future, you’ll be able to pick it up again. Because people aren’t going to remember everything that they’ve learned in our classes for all time. Like, that’s none of us understand things in that way. But do you understand it well enough that you’re gonna be able to be okay with it in the future when you need to with some review? Cool. That works. Or, you know, there’s no significant issues that I see. So, yeah, don’t aim for perfection, which means you have to think really carefully about then, okay, what are errors that can be fine up at that level of successful still? That’s probably the biggest individual thing I see. And then there’s many, many, many details of how you use marks and how we are accounting for them.

David Clark [00:26:36]:

And are you really sort of using points secretly without telling the students that they’re points? Because students will know that if you are. But are you really treating it as, yeah, you’ve you’ve succeeded or you haven’t? So it’s sort of an all or nothing, not partial credit type thing. That does make a big difference in how alternative grading plays out with students.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:26:54]:

I’m laughing so hard because people can’t see us because it’s not a video podcast. But you

David Clark [00:26:58]:

I talk with my hands all the time. Yeah.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:27:00]:

You said, are you secretly using points? And I was like, yeah, David. Actually, I am I would like to ask you before we get to the recommendation segment about this, because I can’t be the only person who who has made some progress on alternative grading and yet has some identifiable things I know could be better. So one is that I have avoided learning about our learning management system that we use

David Clark [00:27:27]:

Yeah.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:27:28]:

To use something besides points. I believe that I for 98 point percent sure that it can, but I I haven’t spent the time to really dig in and and change that. My gosh. It took me so long just to even figure out the right way to set up a grade book to there’s all this customization that needs to happen, etcetera, etcetera. So I’m I’m feeling I’m making excuses. Please forgive me, podcast listeners, that I haven’t been, you know, excelling in this area like I want to. But what I so how I’ve translated it to it is my successful is 100% of whatever the points were for that. Mhmm.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:28:01]:

And my revisable tends to be that you get points, but then you could just revise and get those points back, but there’s a lot of full credit. You know, 90% of people, 95% of people get that full credit. And then the next one would be, like, your revisable. And then I I think this needs new attempt is newer for me because Robert talked about sort of like, the model I’m used to of you you did it or you need to resubmit, but that’s an interesting one for me. So I guess I have 2 questions now. First question is, how how much do you wanna push back to say, boy, points are really messing you up more than you realize, Bonni, and you really should spend the time during your break in the summer, which is to say, I’m an administrator, so we don’t really have breaks. But you know, it’s really worth the the time to use your learning management system to indicate these things versus having points displayed to students? How worth it do you think? I realize it’s completely arbitrary.

David Clark [00:28:57]:

Yeah. So so I wanna, yeah, I wanna answer that right away. I think, in my opinion, if you can do it, it’s worth making a clean break with points. And I realized a lot of LMSs, they’re always there under the hood. So, like, the one that what I use, it ends up being essentially one point for successful and or maybe it’s 2 points for successful, one for revisable, 0 for not yet or need to attempt. But I’ve discovered that I can convince my LMS to display those as actual words. There’s a rubric setup that can show those. And so as long as that’s happening, that students understand that the points are not in any way actually points.

David Clark [00:29:33]:

They’re not averaging or totaling. I think that’s okay. And it’s it’s important to make a break with the points in the sense of averaging them or using them in that sense and change over entirely to the there’s a meaning to this. And I happen to be communicating it maybe under the hood through a number, but it’s really a a word or a feedback meeting.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:29:53]:

Yeah.

David Clark [00:29:53]:

So I think that’s worth I think that’s worth it, and there are ways to do it. But, yeah, LMS is our pain in as soon as you go anywhere off script with not averaging your your totals or anything. Right?

Bonni Stachowiak [00:30:04]:

And can you tell us then about your needs new attempt and how that that gets factored into grades?

David Clark [00:30:11]:

Sure. So, fundamentally, for me, there’s only 2 things. There’s successful, it’s counted, or it hasn’t yet, And the difference between the two levels of not yet that I have, which are revisable and needs new attempt, is what the student can do. So when I say something’s revisable, what that actually means is, this is, I think, a small issue. It’s probably not worth you needing to try a whole new assignment or a whole new attempt at whatever we’re doing. But I need to talk with you, and you need to convince me. Right? And that can become either, okay. Yeah.

David Clark [00:30:42]:

You’ve convinced me it was just a silly blip or it was a minor thing that you’ve understood now. And that becomes successful, so it counts fully. Or it doesn’t, and I realize, oh, we need to, sort of, pivot into, a little bit of a coaching session or something to understand what’s going on. And then that revisable turns into a needs to attempt. And what that means is I wanna see a full from from scratch, you can do this attempt. Right? So a new problem, a new assessment on the same topic in the future. But because they tried it before, I can have that coaching session to say, here’s the sorts of stuff that you need to work on. Let’s talk about that before you make the new attempt.

David Clark [00:31:23]:

As opposed to, oh, the thing you did, actually, that was fine. Now it counts

Bonni Stachowiak [00:31:28]:

fully. Can you give us an example from one of your classes of, assignment that would be revisable and an assignment for or a submission from a student that would need a new attempt?

David Clark [00:31:37]:

Yeah. Absolutely. So I I’m using this exact setup in one of my classes right now where we have some I use the setup for, like, mathematical skills that are the foundation for mathematical writing up at a higher level. Right? And so we’re using this sort of thing on, like, quizzes where students work on mathematical skills. So I have one thing I often use revisable for is where I’m asking a student about a definition because we care so much about definitions in math. So, like, the definition of one number is a multiple of another. Like, we need to be certain what we mean by that. And this definition will have several elements.

David Clark [00:32:10]:

So there’s a central, there’s an equation that needs to happen, and then there’s a couple other details or phrases that that we need to acknowledge along the way. And maybe a student left one of those things out. So everything else is great, but they just didn’t say one thing. And I know from experience that that thing they didn’t say is something that students tend to go, Yeah, yeah, of course. Right? We all know that then that thing has to be an integer. That has to be a certain kind of number or whatever. So I might say, you know, this is revisable. Are you sure you addressed everything thoroughly? Right? So it’s my little hint of you might have missed something there.

David Clark [00:32:41]:

And if they can come into my office and basically say, I completely forgot to say that k was an integer. Yep. Okay. You convinced me. I don’t need to see you write this whole thing from scratch again. I just needed you to realize that, oh, that was an important part of it and now I’ve got it. On the other hand, if I’m asking them about a definition of, you know, m is a multiple of n or something like that, and they are, like, using division, they’re writing something that isn’t involved in this at all, but they’re maybe falling back to a an earlier, more general level of understanding that doesn’t show that they’ve got the mathematical precision we need in the definitions, then I’m saying, okay. Yeah.

David Clark [00:33:16]:

You’re you’re actually not using the important things here. You’re not using what we’ve learned from these definitions. So you need to show me again on a new attempt that you can actually use our specific definition, not, you know, something that you learned in grade school that is functional but is not mathematically precise.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:33:33]:

And in this class, how many, total assessments are they experiencing?

David Clark [00:33:39]:

So I do weekly quizzes and each week, there’s usually 2 different I call them learning targets standards. And that’s maybe a couple of questions on one side of a piece of paper, and then the next learning target is a couple questions on the other side. So that’s 14 weeks times 2 ish, 28 different assessments of my list of standards and then occasionally a few larger ones where students have, so friend Kate Owens calls these, like, reassessment carnivals, right, or celebration of learning, right, where we say, okay. Let’s look at all the different things you’ve learned recently. And if you need to show me you’ve learned one of them, now is your chance as opposed to just a couple focus things.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:34:19]:

I want an assessment carnival. That just sounds like fun. Is there the popcorn to

David Clark [00:34:25]:

look at and many different places to go, and you pick the ones that are best that you need to do the most or whatever.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:34:30]:

Oh my gosh. I’m thinking fried Oreos, the fried Twinkies, the oh, that sounds amazing. Alright. This is the time in the show where we each get to share our recommendations. And since I have already recommended the book grading for growth, I’m going to recommend from David’s website a page he has put together called alternative grading resources. And, specifically, although the whole page is wonderful, but, specifically, at the bottom, there were 3 scholar scholarship of teaching and learning oriented articles that I think would be particularly helpful for people. What I appreciate about what David has put together is it’s not an overwhelming list of resources to do some follow-up and additional learning on. And, David, I had I normally don’t tell the guest what I’m gonna recommend, but in this case, I did.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:35:20]:

And, David, I’m wondering if you would maybe want to share a little bit since you know these studies more than me. I can even share my screen for for David if he wants me to.

David Clark [00:35:31]:

Sure. Yeah. Remind me of which things I’m

Bonni Stachowiak [00:35:32]:

looking for. Front of me. Yes. Do you wanna just share briefly what the listeners could learn more about if they come visit these studies?

David Clark [00:35:41]:

Absolutely. So the first of these, I used to call it Butler and Nissan for the authors, is this classic study about what happens when students get feedback, what on, some sort of work they did versus what happens when they get a grade, and what happens when they get both? And it turns out that that as soon as there’s a grade assigned, they tend to lose the intrinsic motivation they might have to learn these things and focus entirely on that extrinsic grade aspect. So this is classic. It’s been replicated all over the place. It says a lot about the effect that grades have on our brains and our motivation. Another one, so Enderman and Konka, the relation between academic motivation and cheating is this fantastic study that just summarizes years of work from motivation theory Bonni, like, why is it that students cheat? Right? What is the motivation for cheating? And research grounded advice about how to not set up a system where students are encouraged or are are willing to cheat. And the advice is essentially follow the 4 pillars. Right? Allow students reassessments, show that there’s clear standards you’re following, give helpful feedback, and give use a course rubric, they say.

David Clark [00:36:50]:

So we would say marks that indicate progress. And this helps show students that you’re in a situation where you care about their learning as opposed to care about their performance And that discourages cheating. And then the last one was one really interesting thing. Students tell us all the time that they feel less stress in alternatively graded systems. And, a friend of mine, Drew Lewis, did a study on this. And you can you use validated survey instruments to decide how much test anxiety students are feeling. And what he discovered was that, yes, students do in fact feel less test anxiety over the course of the semester in an alternatively graded class, and they feel more in their other classes. So we can actually see that happen.

David Clark [00:37:29]:

And there’s a standard, a very common gender gap that shows up in students on their expression of test anxiety, which also disappeared in the class if you were to survey. So there’s all sorts of interesting things happening with stress and anxiety.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:37:45]:

Oh, thank you so much, David. I appreciate today’s conversation, the last time we got to talk, all the times we talked while I was reading your book, but you didn’t know we were talking because it was a one way conversation. Although in my mind, sometimes we talked, but that was just in my imagination. So and now we get to hear from you whatever you would like to recommend today to close us out.

David Clark [00:38:04]:

Alright. So I’ll start by recommending that your readers read those articles.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:38:08]:

Yeah. To get those. Yes. Yay.

David Clark [00:38:10]:

Okay. I’m gonna give it a totally different kind of recommendation. Last time I was on your podcast, I recommended a Dave, which was about, like, cats hanging out on quilts and it was fuzzy and it was cozy and it was so cute. K. So I’m gonna recommend a completely different game this time, which is called Watergate, the board game. So Watergate, Nixon, the press, all of that. This is a 2 player only game I’ve been playing against my wife a whole lot recently. It is cutthroat.

David Clark [00:38:39]:

It is I know that you know that I know that I could do, you know, that kind

Bonni Stachowiak [00:38:44]:

of thinking. Oh my goodness. It is

David Clark [00:38:46]:

sounds crazy. Nixon trying to survive versus the press trying to tie him to the things that happened. It is a fascinating game. It makes me sweat. Like like, can I get away with this or not? That is so funny. If that sounds if that sounds good to you, you should get this game.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:39:02]:

I feel like you are in cahoots with the board game industry because we bought our dot last time you were on, you did recommend that game. We bought our daughter that game. And then now I am a big history slash political geek, and so, I mean, you literally are describing a game I wanna just pause the conversation and go purchase immediately. This sounds amazing. And I kinda like that it’s 2 players only because sometimes when Dave and I, we do enjoy playing games with the kids, but it is also fun to just sometimes have a game that’s just the 2 of us. It sounds amazing. Alright. So, you have something else maybe for us to do?

David Clark [00:39:35]:

I have one other thing. Good. This is a just a book I read recently. So now we’re we’re totally off the alternative grading category.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:39:41]:

But And the game category, sadly.

David Clark [00:39:43]:

Yes. So so the recommendation is a a sort of sci fi ish classic called the doomsday book by Connie Willis. When I so I only learned about this recently. I enjoy a lot of sci fi. I read a lot. Somehow, it was totally off my radar. And I learned about it and started reading it. And number 1, I thought it was written 2 years ago.

David Clark [00:40:04]:

It was written in, like, 1990, but it just was so relevant, the things it was describing. And it is slow paced, it is a lot of character building and a lot of relationship building, and there were points when I read it where I thought, is this going somewhere? Like, what’s happening here? It pays off. It absolutely pays off. So if you if that sounds good, it’s worth the read. It is 5 stars for me.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:40:31]:

Oh, that’s a big endorsement for you.

David Clark [00:40:33]:

I don’t give 5 stars to many books.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:40:35]:

It’s so funny. That’s awesome. Well, David, thank you so much for coming back on the show, for helping us continue to learn. Thank you for your book, for your newsletter, and all the ways that you help speak into so many people from around the world and into really ultimately serving our students better. It’s such always such a joy to talk to you. Every time we talk, I’m always thinking for weeks after or months afterward what we what we chatted about. So thank you again for today.

David Clark [00:41:00]:

But likewise, you you make me think about what I’m saying. So thank you for having me, and it’s always good to talk with you.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:41:08]:

Thanks once again to David Clark for returning to Teaching in Higher Ed. Today’s episode was produced by me, Bonni Stachowiak. It was edited by the ever talented Andrew Kroeger. Podcast production support was provided by the amazing Sierra Priest. Thanks to each one of you for listening. And if you’ve been listening for a while and have yet to rate the show on your preferred podcast listening tool of choice, I’d love to have you do that so that other people can more easily discover the show. Thanks for listening, and I’ll see you next time on Teaching in Higher Ed.

Teaching in Higher Ed transcripts are created using a combination of an automated transcription service and human beings. This text likely will not represent the precise, word-for-word conversation that was had. The accuracy of the transcripts will vary. The authoritative record of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcasts is contained in the audio file.