Episode 13: Stress, Grades, and the American Way! Time for a Re-boot.
The percentage of students on our campuses suffering from depression doubled from 2009 to 2019. Suicides increased 50% over the same period. The pandemic probably hasn’t helped. Campuses nationwide are responding by increasing access to health care professionals and training staff and faculty to identify stressed students. However, most campuses are not dealing with one of the most significant stressors in student’s lives, GRADES! In this episode, we talk with Dr. Joshua Eyler, Director of Faculty Development at the University of Mississippi about the stress of grades and how institutions and faculty need to rethink approaches to decreasing stress by changing how we think about and act on grading and evaluating students. We rely on grades, a time tested but inaccurate and misleading assessment system, a human construct, first brought into higher education in the 1790s. Time for a reboot, perhaps?
Episode 6: Ungrading: Renaissance Humanism and the Challenges of Assessment with Susan D. Blum
Dr. Susan Blum (University of Notre Dame), a Renaissance Humanist (look it up) discusses her recent book, UNGRADING: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and what to do instead). In this episode, Dr. Blum discusses problems associated with the long established system of grades and grading and discusses a recent movement, UNGRADING, which is a call to arms to provide learning environments that motivate student learning by changing the way students are evaluated. If you have never heard of the concept of Ungrading this interview is likely to be disturbing, raising issues about our educational system that may challenge educators who have not questioned our model of student evaluation. If you have some familiarity with Ungrading but have yet to incorporate some of these principles in your courses, we hope that this discussion might provide the support you need to dip your toes metaphorically in the “Ungrading waters”. Lastly, if you are an expert in Ungrading please sit back and enjoy the discussion. Perhaps you can pass this episode on to colleagues that might be ready to take the plunge.