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Jesse Stommel Profile picture
@Jessifer
Mar 16, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read • Read on X
Today, from my own institution: "During the current Spring semester, undergraduate students may take more than one course as Pass/Fail, HOWEVER, this decision should be made carefully." #PassFailNation
"Total limits on the number or percent of courses that can be taken Pass/Fail remain and Pass/Fail courses will not count for General Education or the major. Students should only make this request having reviewed the scholarship and financial aid implications."
It's disturbing how emphatic this message is, the all-caps especially. Why wouldn't the institution (or accrediting body) do all necessary work to rethink what pass/fail might mean for struggling students? Why wouldn't they make every effort to support students at this moment?
If the institution continues with these policies, without thinking carefully about the implications, I will be giving every single one of my students an "A" this semester.
We all need to be erring in the favor of human beings not bureaucracy.

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More from @Jessifer

Jesse Stommel Profile picture
Jan 20, 2023
The conversation around ChatGPT isn't a particularly new conversation. People have been talking about how technology will transform or dismantle education for decades, even centuries. (a thread)
The fear that students will use technology to cheat is also not new. There has been headline after headline about the rise in cheating in the wake of the internet, in the wake of online paper mills, in the wake of online learning during the pandemic, etc.
Even the chalkboard (when it first started appearing in classrooms) was singled out as a potentially dangerous technology. It's important for us to look back even as we look forward — to think about what motivates these conversations.
Read 16 tweets
Jesse Stommel Profile picture
Jan 18, 2023
Gatekeeping is the single most harmful feature of academia.
When ideas congeal into a “movement,” “club,” or an exclusive “community,” lines too often get drawn, people bully each other for status, and already marginalized people end up further marginalized, which is one reason I’ve stepped back significantly from academic Twitter.
At this point, what’s important to me is the work — teachers and students collaborating to support, defend, and (where necessary) transform education. This isn’t “big tent” work. At this point, it’s “humongous tent” work.
Read 5 tweets
Jesse Stommel Profile picture
Jan 18, 2023
I’m increasingly frustrated when I see ungrading or a critique of grades associated with a lack of structure. One big problem of traditional grades is that they structure much of education. Removing grades, though, doesn’t remove structure, just one kind of problematic structure.
Adding flexibility for students and teachers also doesn’t remove structure. I’m disabled, neurodiverse, and need both flexibility and structure to succeed. Flexibility and structure are not at odds. Care and structure are not at odds.
There are lots of mechanisms better than grades at providing structure for learners: a clear schedule, concise descriptions of class activities, clear ways to ask for help or feedback, community architecture that makes it easy for students to connect with each other.
Read 11 tweets
Jesse Stommel Profile picture
Jan 18, 2023
Ungrading isn’t a word for all alternative grading practices. It’s a set of conversations (drawing together teachers and students) that push against and ask hard questions of grading and standardized/quantitative assessment. There are lots of entry points to those conversations.
The word “Ungrading” has use value right now, which is why I’ve used it and why I’ve worked to catalyze conversations about #ungrading. But the conversations aren’t new. We have to look back in order to look forward.
The first step toward #ungrading is a series of conversations about the failures of standardized assessment, the harm letter grades do to already marginalized students, and the harm they do to relationships between teachers, between students, and between teachers and students.
Read 12 tweets
Jesse Stommel Profile picture
Oct 23, 2022
10 quotes (in no particular order) from almost 200 years that have informed my thinking about grades and ungrading:

“When the how’s of assessment preoccupy us, they tend to chase the why’s back into the shadows.” ~ Alfie Kohn
“Grading tends to undermine the climate for teaching and learning. Once we start grading their work, students are tempted to study or work for the grade rather than for learning.” ~ Peter Elbow
“The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy.” ~ bell hooks

hooks advocates for “continual self-evaluation” both of a student by the student and of a teacher by the teacher.
Read 12 tweets
Jesse Stommel Profile picture
Oct 22, 2022
“Ungrading is a philosophy and not a practice, one bent on turning the tables in the classroom so that students can intervene in their own education.” ⁦

This from @slamteacher⁩ is one of the most lucid pieces I’ve read about #ungrading. timeshighereducation.com/campus/problem…
As @slamteacher points out, ungrading is not a “plug-and-play best practice.”
Nodding to Paulo Freire’s notion of the “student-teacher”, @slamteacher writes, “Ungrading is about rearranging the room, placing the teacher among the students and requiring steady engagement with one another. Teachers and students share both roles; they should learn together.”
Read 5 tweets

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