Rubrics in the "Gradeless" classroom

The students have reacted positively to the "no grades" learning environment this year. The students have been given much more choice in their learning experiences in the class this year as well. The students have been able to spend more time on video or audio production and some prefer to do a mixture of each. The new direction and organization of the class has allowed the students to do that. The district does require a number grade for each progress report and report card to be entered for each student and sent home. The student conferences have been an excellent tool for the student to reflect on their learning and assess their effort in the class. The challenge I have had was how to keep track of each student who may be working on completely different projects at any given time. The challenge and new delivery of instruction is exciting to me.

I began the year with keeping an ongoing online discussion between the student and I with a SE2R feedback log. The feedback log was setup as a Schoology discussion that was individually assigned to each student. The individual student and I were the only ones who could read the discussions that were about them unless their parent/guardian also had a Schoology account. The students were reminded to interact with me on the SE2R feedback log throughout the year. The feedback log posts would have a bold type title about each assignment or project the student completed. The student would respond to each of my posts which created a focused conversation about each project. The students would read my feedback and they would respond when they revised their work and what the revision was, and then I would respond again and so on. These conversations would continue until they reached mastery of the project/assignment. The students would also be able to see how their work grew and improved over time which is a real-world scenario in the industry. The SE2R model would help students identify the importance of feedback and the revision process. The issue that was bothering me was that in the ungraded classroom, I had hundreds of assignments turned in that are "ungraded" according to the LMS. I realized I had to create something that would clean up my gradebook in the LMS while keeping the class environment as a gradeless one. I created a rubric based on the SE2R model.

The rubric would be more of a checklist than used for a traditional grade. The rubric would be able to be used for any assignment or project. The rubric is titled "SE2R Rubric" and was created in the Schoology grade setup section. The rubric had one row which was titled "Evidence." Evidence would refer to what was completed (project assignment, etc.).  The grading scale portion of the rubric had four (4) sections: Mastery Achieved, Revision(s) Submitted, Evidence Submitted, and No Evidence Submitted. This rubric will allow the student and I to quickly look at what was completed and see if they took advantage of the SE2R feedback loop to improve their projects and learning. The 3rd quarter has been very short due to losing a week to a winter storm and another week of low attendance for winter state testing. The rubric will be formally introduced after we get back from mid-winter break which is February 19th - February 22nd. A picture of the simple SE2R rubric is below.

Recently I also came across this blog post about Learning Maps which could be a great tool to help students align their learning to the ISTE standards for students. The upcoming break will be an excellent opportunity to look at ways to roll out the learning maps and SE2R rubric to the class when we return.

The Project Workflow

My students are given a lot of choices when it comes to projects in the class. The students who are in the course usually have a definite interest in either video or audio production. I felt that giving them the freedom to choose what they would be working on would help them achieve a better class experience and also provide them with an individualized learning experience. The students would also be accountable for their learning and progress in the class.

A list of projects has been provided to the students to choose from and included both video and audio production projects. Projects were also categorized within the video and audio production project choices. The categories are promotional, informational, entertainment video, music production, MIDI, video post-production, audio post-production, software certification, emerging technologies, and course-related projects. The emerging technologies projects included 360 video and course-related projects included game design, theatrical lighting design, and mobile device production. The students would be required to choose one from the list and could also be an individual project or a small group project. The student would then have to submit to me a project proposal.

A project proposal is an online form that was created in Google Forms. The proposal asked for the student name, project title, whether or not the project was individual or group, and who was in the group. The students were also asked to identify what new skills they will be learning with the project and identify which ISTE standards would be aligned to the project. The students would need to identify what equipment would be used, materials needed, length of time to complete the project and also a target date for completion. The final question on the proposal was to list or discuss what assistance from the instructor would be needed to successfully complete the project. The student would be allowed to start the project once the proposal was received and given the "green light."

I noticed during the first semester that the students would be very engaged in the work but had challenges staying on task at times and would procrastinate. I decided to check on their work more frequently during the second semester and would be checking on their projects every Wednesday and Friday. The students would need to show progress on their projects at each check-in.

End of the 1st Semester Reflection and Results

The first and second quarters have ended. The first semester was fairly successful but looking back, the semester has shown me where to improve the class and the "gradeless" system. All of the students did produce some projects and completed some required assignments. I still had students who did not put forth maximum effort and those who did put forth maximum effort plus those who ranged in the middle. The major difference that stood out to me during this point of the school year, opposed to the previous years, is that the student was taking more ownership on themselves and also identifying how they have grown in the course.

The students and I met and discussed what their effort was for the past two marking periods. I provided students with a checklist of what was assigned and available to be worked on during the first semester. I made individual notations as to what was not completed/started, completed, and revised after my suggestions for a better product. The students also submitted a pre-conference form that asked them multiple questions. The questions asked the student to reflect on their strengths, weaknesses, areas of confusion, thoughts on class dynamics, attitude toward school/class, and personal goal setting for the second semester. The form continued to ask the student to evaluate themselves on projects, career communications, assessments, and professionalism. The students would need to discuss their effort on each of those categories, state what they would rate themselves as, explain why and provide evidence for that rating. The forms were submitted to me online prior to the individual student conference. The review of each submission provided me insight to each student mindset and also helped to drive and start the conversations about their learning and effort. A few numbers of students did not complete the form which was also addressed in the conferences. I could see that some students needed more direction in the future as to completing the pre-conference form.

At the start of each conference I explained that the semester was twenty (20) weeks in length and our class time amounted to a total of 225 hours. The student was then shown that if they were employed at a production studio and earning $20/Hr. they would have made a total of $4,500 for they work in the first semester. The conference would last about fifteen (15) minutes in length and they were told that these conversations were to be positive about their learning and class effort. The students were very honest forthcoming and honest about their effort. A few of the students would underestimate their achievements and some inflated theirs. I took this opportunity in the discussion to compare their efforts to employees and together helped the individual student to rate themselves more appropriately.  The senior class from the 2017-18 school year had grades ranging from 20% - 99% for the second marking period while the 2018-19 senior class ranged from 63% - 89%. The grades from the current senior are higher, evidence of learning has improved, and individual accountabilty is now a part of the reflection and learning.

2018-19 School Year (Class Setup)

The school year began and I was ready. I decided that the class would gong to follow the SE2R model and every 5 weeks we would have a student-teacher grading conference. I did have four (4) categories that the students would have to evaluate themselves on. The categories are Projects, Career Communications (ELA), Assessments (mini-lessons about video/audio), and Professionalism. The categories are weighted with projects being the greatest part of their grade. The ISTE standards are also the main part of my class because the students would need to identify their learning to the ISET standards.

The senior class remembered how the final project went so they were already understanding the process. The junior class was introduced to the SE2R model and how we were a "gradeless" class. The junior class seemed open to the idea but were also a bit cautious and was looking for a "catch" it felt. The ultimately understood and we spent the better part of the first couple weeks explaining and reviewing the SE2R model.

Engagement and motivations seemed to improve. Collaboration among students grew also. The gradeless classroom was moving forward well but I still needed to find how to make the course more student-led, provide more choices, and also create a better way to provide feedback to the students and help them document their learning and evidence for when we had our first 5-week grading conferences.

2017-18 School Year (Gradeless Pilot)

The school year started and I was not yet ready to implement what I had learned yet. I spent most of the year continuing research and figuring out how to implement the new model. I was very scared to start it but realized that I needed to. If I was going to try this and do it, I had to just start, which I did in the 4th quarter with my senior class only.

The idea was to have the student submit projects and participate in the feedback loop that is part of the SE2R model. The video and audio production is heavily based on the feedback loop from clients, so I thougth this would be a great enhancement for the students. I was only experimenting so I made the final project a "gradeless" one. The students would meet with me weekly and I would provide feedback and they would take the feedback and adjust their work accordingly. The feedback was meant to help them see how the project could be improved and also provide them with a means to get to a mastery level on the skills they were using in the project.

The end of the quarter arrived and I met with each student and we discussed what they did, what they learned, what could have been improved, what they would do different ad also what number grade they would assign to their effort and why. The conversations I had with the students were very detailed. The students all identified their own learning. The students also could see how their work had grown form comparing the early submissions to what the final project looked like. The students also were very open to this idea and at times harder on themselves than I thought they would be. I was ready to reflect in the summer of 2018 and come back in the fall with a full plan on becomeing a gradeless classroom.

Research for Gradeless Classroom

During the summer of 2017, I began to research how to become a "gradeless" classroom. The research brought me to a book by Mark Barnes titled, "Assessment 3.0," and another by Starr Sackstein which is part of the Hacking Learning series. I also found some TED talks and multiple related articles online about this new way of assessing students.

The book by Mark Barnes focuses on mastery learning and providing authentic feedback to the student. Assessment 3.0 also follows the SE2R (summarize, explain, redirect, and resubmit). Starr Sacksteins book allows follows this model and was written after she read "Assessment 3.0". The two books were very quick reads and also excited me about the idea of having a gradeless classroom. I began to email Starr to discuss how I could move forward and she was a huge help and also very responsive to my questions. I continued my research and then began to plan how to implement the new "gradeless" system.

Teaching Methods

The teaching style I had at the beginning of my career was probably like many new teachers. I was teaching the way I remembered how my teachers ran their classes back in the '80s. Essentially, I was lecturing, giving homework, quizzes, testing, guided notes, and hands-on projects, etc. Welcome to Dullsville! I did not have a lot of educational technology in 2007, nor did I know much it being new to the career. The class was only equipped with a projector at first to show my lessons on the screen. The students were learning but not really engaged the way I had hoped and the class did not seem as an exciting learning environment that I was hoping for. I began researching new trends in teaching for each year and tried to implement what I thought would reach my students and their learning styles.

Educational technology and my teaching began to evolve. I was using SMART boards, clickers and using a very early version of gamified learning with review games in 2008. Later in my career, I would find out that those review games are really not "gamified" learning. The students were becoming more engaged but their motivation for class success was still not where it needed to be. The course became a flipped classroom in 2010 with Schoology as the LMS and then I gamified my entire course based on my research and the book, "The Multiplayer Classroom," by Lee Sheldon.

The class was improving but the grades were not. Discussions with colleagues each marking period focused on the students and their grades. Then one day, a colleague said in a joking way "I'm not going to grade anything anymore." We all laughed a bit about the idea and then I wondered if you really could do this. Could you really have a class without grades? I did some research and discovered that yes you can. I started researching how to become a gradeless classroom during the summer of 2017.