Exploring alternatives to grading often means experimenting within one’s own classroom, while translating the outcomes to comply with the larger institution’s reporting requirements. It is rarer to encounter explorations of alternative grading at the level of a program, school, or institution. However, thinking systemically is crucial for creating change that lives beyond the efforts of single heroic instructors.

From a distance, personalization seems like a good thing. After all, a building block of good instruction is to know your students. But there is also a darker side. The focus on personalization in educational technology often comes at the expense of the kinds of relationships we know are important for learning. The personal learning espoused by edtech entrepreneurs often leans towards extreme individualization, and a limited view of knowledge and learning. Author Barry Fishman asks, Can we do better?

Grading systems are remarkably resistant to rethinking given the vast infrastructure built up around our commonly-accepted approaches to grading. Barry Fishman recounts some of his encounters with both the institutional infrastructure, explaining how systemic inertia makes it difficult to give up the current system.

Gameful learning is designing for learning. Barry Fishman asks us to consider how games might inspire our thinking about learning, reminding us that good games don’t work because they are fun; they work because they are challenging and engaging.

Although most gradeless teachers engage in “subtraction,” removing traditional grading from our classrooms, we also need “addition” in the form of new infrastructure that connects our individual efforts to the larger systems students must navigate.