There’s No One Right Way to Ungrade!
Because ungrading is essentially an emancipatory practice, it cannot be held to one formula or singular standard. Instead, ungrading relies on a robust community of educators to circulate, celebrate, and elevate the practice in its various forms. TG2 team member, Lisa Wennerth, welcomes four trailblazing educators, whose article “Why There Isn’t One ‘Right Way’ to Practice Ungrading” posits ungrading as a fundamentally open, welcoming, and responsive practice for all—not just the elite few. This podcast originates with a Special Community Gathering, where Lisa first facilitated a discussion with our guests and then opened the floor to questions from participants.
Our guests
Liz Leininger is an Associate Professor of Neurobiology at New College of Florida, Florida's public liberal arts honors college that uses narrative evaluations instead of letter grades. A neurobiologist by training, she teaches broadly across the biology and neuroscience curriculum and mentors students in research. She is also currently the director of New College's SET SAIL first-year seminar program.
Rita Shah is a cultural criminologist who combines textual analysis with qualitative and visual methods to understand the ways in which correctional systems are socially and legally constructed. Her work has been published in the British Journal of Criminology and Contemporary Justice Review and is supported by NEH and NSF grants. Her most recent book, The Meaning of Rehabilitation and its Impact on Parole: There and Back Again in California, queries the concept of rehabilitation to determine how, on a legislative and policy level, the term is defined as a goal of correctional systems. She received her BA in communications, legal institutions, economics, and government (CLEG) from American University; her MA in social ecology; and her Ph.D. in criminology, law and society from the University of California, Irvine. In her free time, she can be found on photographic expeditions, reading for fun, or watching American football and soccer.
Taylor Vivanco wants those new to the profession to see that they can do ungrading too. As a student teacher, he implemented ungrading practices as part of a research inquiry project for his Teacher Education Program. Now as a first year teacher, he continues to evolve his ungrading practices while also involving his students more in developing his pedagogy. He shares some of his work through a new Critical Teachers Network of graduates from UCI's Teacher Education Program where he hopes to bring other new teachers into this work.
Firas Moosvi is a Lecturer in the Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, and Statistics department at the University of British Columbia Okanagan. Though he has a PhD in Physics (from UBC Vancouver), he also teaches computer science and data science at the undergraduate and graduate levels. He strongly believes in computational literacy for all and aims to make STEM courses accessible through Active Learning techniques and open education resources. His research interests are varied, but the two main umbrellas are the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL), and Learning Analytics. Firas is looking at how learning analytics data can provide insight to surface and ultimately reduce inequities in STEM programs. He is also heavily invested in promoting and implementing alternative grading systems in large classes, at scale.
