Contract Grading
Simone Waller, English
I decided to try contract grading after participating in the CTL Ungrading reading group and discussing the changes colleagues had seen in their students after adopting contract grading practices. To provide a basic description, contract grading involves establishing the specific quantity of course assignments that correspond to particular grades and the level of quality required for successful completion of each assignment. Students work cooperatively with the instructor to agree in advance to the number of assignments the student will submit and the grade that will result from that work. This model makes clear to students the expectations for the course as a whole and individual assignments, and ensures that the grade a student receives in the course reflects their attainment of the learning objectives represented in successful completion of coursework.
As I set out to design a course that implemented contract grading, I realized that the alignment between the learning objectives for individual assignments and the stated learning outcomes for the course would be most essential to establishing my confidence in this grading method. After I had established the essential questions and topics my course readings needed to address, I listed the skills and concepts students who successful completed the course engaging with this body of literature would be expected to demonstrate. From there, I designed incremental assignments that would enable students to develop these skills, as well as larger assignments that would serve as opportunities to demonstrate their level of accomplishment. As I drafted my instructions for these assignments, I asked myself, “How could a student demonstrate that they have achieved the specific learning objectives related to this assignment?” Approaching crafting assignments in this manner enabled me to think creatively about what kinds of work students in my course could produce to practice and demonstrate the skills and concepts I had identified as essential. I also found that I was much clearer in delineating my standards for this work and better linked my understanding of the “quality” of the work to specific learning objectives. Likewise, I achieved greater clarity regarding which assignments were essential to demonstrating a passing level of accomplishment with regards to the learning outcomes of the course, and which were opportunities to demonstrate further achievement beyond passing.
While I am mostly happy with the assignment structure and grade scale I produced, I did need to spend considerable time explaining the structure to students, and will have an increased amount of student work to read this semester. To avoid the pitfall of “tracking” students into particular grades, I took a colleague’s advice to hold one-on-one meetings with students to discuss the grading process and their own learning goals for the course. I tried to listen to each student’s aspirations for the course and to understand how this course fit into their larger educational plan before discussing how those plans might translate into a particular grade. I also added assignments that required students to reflect on their learning in the course by reassessing earlier work or describing patterns in their participation.