For this month’s podcast recommendation, we suggest an episode entitled Ungrading: Re-Thinking Teaching, Learning, and Assessment in Higher Education from the Lecture Breakers podcast. This podcast is hosted by Barbi Honeycutt. She is a teaching and learning consultant, instructional coach, author, and speaker. From the Lecture Breakers podcast website, “The Lecture Breakers podcast is the place where educators share innovative teaching strategies to help you break up your lecture, energize your classroom, increase student engagement, and improve learning.”
The episode we suggest for this month is a conversation between Barbi and Dr. Susan Blum, author/editor of the book Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead). They discuss ideas and strategies around assessment in the classroom and the concept of shifting the focus from evaluating students with grades to helping students to focus more on their learning through ungrading.
Behrend faculty member, Dr. Ashley Russell, has been using un-grading for some of her assignments in BMB 252—Molecular and Cellular Biology II. She presented information at the Fall 2022 Instructor Days event on the topic. To view her co-presentation, visit the page Grading Effort and Process: How Rethinking What to Emphasize in Grading Impacts Student Learning Outcomes.
If you are interested in having further conversations about the concept of ungrading, Behrend is organizing a faculty learning community for the spring 2023 semester. You can use this form to sign up for the learning community.
