Decentering Authority to Communicate Learning
What happens when we decenter our authority in the classroom? How does such decentering facilitate communicating with our students about their learning? These and other questions led us to try a radical experiment.
We are professors at a small, STEM-focused college in the Midwest. Although we are in different fields and at different stages in our careers, we both concluded that components of the traditional classroom, specifically the power imbalance between students and teachers, present an obstacle to communicating learning to students. In an effort to shift power, we have created gradeless courses that, we believe, improve student learning and faculty teaching.
For Emily, who is a pre-tenure professor in Biomedical Engineering, the primary obstacle has been establishing her authority as the expert in the classroom.
Emily on her role as the “expert” in the classroom
As a child, I always heard my father on work calls using phrases like “I suspect” or “it is my suspicion,” and I always thought it was so amazing that he knew enough about a topic that he could speculate about it. When I felt that level of knowledge in my field, I tried to emulate my father by using those phrases in the classroom. The perception from my students was still that I didn’t know things, but those phrases actually signaled when my knowledge was most robust.
When I realized this, I spent many years changing my language and body behavior to establish myself as an authority in the eyes of my students. I learned to project confidence and at times, even arrogance, all for the sake of making my students see me as the “rigorous” engineering professor they expected. This behavior created distance between me and my students and forged the illusion that I was the keeper of the knowledge that they sought. As a result, I would say something in class and my students would try to replicate it verbatim on an exam to impress me and earn points.
The problem was that I wasn’t convinced they understood or remembered the words they were writing. I realized that my authoritarian approach was serving no one and decided to shift the energy in my classroom to a more decentralized power dynamic—changing both my messaging and my assessment strategies.
For Julia, who is a tenured full professor of English, the obstacle is the syllabus and how it functions primarily as a record of penalty and punishment.
Julia on her role as assessor of penalties
When I reflect on the various ways that I communicate about learning to students, I think of the course syllabus. The syllabus is the primary vehicle by which faculty communicate their expectations to students. We repeat the instructions to “read the syllabus” or more often, “it’s in the syllabus,” but students clearly don’t read it, or perhaps they read it but don’t receive the message we believe it conveys.
We believe that the syllabus communicates about learning, but if I review the syllabi I have written, I see that the syllabus primarily communicates about penalties for breaking my rules. Missing class more than eight times in the term results in a penalty. Turning in late work results in a penalty. Not taking the required quizzes or tests? You guessed it—a penalty. If I want to transform how I communicate about learning with my students, I can start with making changes to the syllabus.
Communicating learning to students
Our impulse to go gradeless came from a shared belief that authority in the classroom should prioritize learning rather than rules and points. Research has shown that grades often do more harm than good. Removing the authoritarian position of the professor and restoring power to the student has the potential to boost students’ confidence, create agency, and form lifelong learners. We have found that the initial shift to going gradeless is sometimes difficult for educators who must relinquish control, but it is equally, if not more, challenging for students who have been raised in an environment where they have very little autonomy regarding the classroom experience and how they are assessed. To make the transition successful we must earn students’ trust and help them believe that the ungrading process can work.
When we transform the traditional classroom in order to decenter power, we have a radically different environment for assessing student learning:
No points are given on individual assignments,
Grades, if they are assigned, are the product of consultation with the student about the work they have done and how they view it.
The move to gradeless learning manifests differently in each class. In the syllabus for her ungraded first-year composition course, Julia includes a section of the syllabus called Community Expectations. Framing the class as a community of writers, she explains,
In order for our writing community to work well for the benefit of all of its members, I have written a set of community expectations and values. These expectations and values are key to making sure our community functions optimally and productively. As our community grows and thrives, we will revisit the list and revise and/or add to it.
In this paragraph, Julia communicates two important aspects of the ungraded course: one, that she has created these expectations for a clear purpose, and, two, that these expectations are negotiable—students can discuss, revise, and add to them as they become more familiar with the course content. Following the Communication Expectations, Julia includes two more sub-paragraphs labeled “Show up and be present” and “Be willing to learn and grow.” By putting her expectations up front, she communicates to her students that this course will invite them to participate, collaborate, and learn differently.
Emily has identified that a potential pain point for professors and students is in the area of assessments. The STEM students we teach take assessments very seriously. They want to know exactly what will be covered and how they should prepare. They expect study guides and checklists, and that’s fine, but it moves authority again back to the professor: students have little agency or responsibility for their learning. While removing grades might signal a loss of “rigor,” we argue that graded assessments don’t always prepare students for the ways in which their knowledge will be put to the test in the real world. Similarly, it is especially problematic and unrealistic to assign numerical values to written work. Performance on a workplace report, for example, won’t come back with points deducted. When the responsibility of deciding how knowledge is demonstrated and assessed, authority for learning should be shared with the student.
Rather than dolling out points as rewards, we can help students understand that, just because they have not received a numerical grade, does not mean there is no value to the feedback. We can also help them realize that, just because we are not dictating “right and wrong” answers, we aren’t suggesting that all answers are equally valid or correct. Going gradeless doesn’t mean we can’t point out a bad statics calculation or a poorly written English sentence.
Introducing students to the gradeless approach
When expectations are fluid as they are in the gradeless context, students may perceive that such expectations are ill-defined. Because we see professorial authority is problematic, we also see that students trust and feel safe with the familiar authoritative relationship. We must scaffold this transition—from graded to gradeless, from powerless to powerful—if students are to make the change successfully.
Here are some things we do to foster trust in the gradeless context:
Check in with students and inquire about their well-being when they miss deadlines or don’t fulfill their responsibilities. Rather than being punitive, inquire first about their well-being and show concern rather than disappointment.
Offer extra time or no time limit on quizzes and exams with the message that we care more about their ability to demonstrate knowledge over the speed at which they can demonstrate it. We can reiterate that our focus on learning and offer extensions without penalty.
Give feedback along with the option to revise work without penalty. Online feedback sessions offer the opportunity for both peer-to-peer and professor-to-peer assessment in a low-stakes environment. Students can revise their work based on the suggestions that they receive, with the focus remaining on the quality of the work rather than the number of points earned.
Repeat the message that we want students to learn, and we care about their learning and understanding above all else. If we say it enough, perhaps our students start to believe it.
Adjust course timeless according to overall class progress. If a large portion of the class shows weakness in a certain area or performs poorly on an assessment, spend more time revisiting the difficult concepts. This again reinforces that learning is more important than coverage. Even in a class where the curriculum is prescribed, we should be asking ourselves if it better for students to understand topics at the expense of breadth. We think it is.
As we continue our parallel projects, we see important changes occurring in our students and ourselves: students ask more questions about course content than about earning points on an exam. We are able to focus on communicating learning to our students. We plan to continue to reflect on and write about going gradeless to better understand the impact of this approach. Ultimately, we hope and expect to see a shift in our students from rule-followers checking boxes to earn an “A” to partners in their own life-long learning.
Emily Dosmar, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute, IN. She is deeply engaged in diversity and inclusion efforts in STEM and on the Rose-Hulman campus. She has also published several works in the areas of online learning, ungrading, and engineering pedagogy and is on a constant quest to free her students from the fear of failure.
Julia Williams, Ph.D., is a Professor of English at Rose-Hulman. She works collaboratively with educators, graduate students, and administrators to make academic change happen on their campuses. Her publications have appeared in the ASEE Prism Magazine, the Transactions of the IEEE Professional Communication Society, and the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing, among others. You can find her on Twitter @DoctorJDub.