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Student Perspectives
Symposium: Discussion in Progress: A Burkean Parlor Conversation on Equity-Based Assessment
This symposium documents an ongoing conversation between five faculty members from Portland Community College. The discussion explores what “equity-based assessment” means grappling both with the reasons for adopting such approaches as contract grading labor-based grading and ungrading and with the challenges of implementing them in two-year colleges.
“Easy & understanding”: everyone has power in this space
When we offer students engagement in the creation of the course not only do we acknowledge that those in culturally minoritized positions are adept at deploying the same skills we seek to teach but also we show that their lived experiences are valuable necessary and desirable within the classroom. This recognition opens a space in which students not only feel a sense of belonging but also create the terms of belonging. This article shares an evolving five-year and running process and offers an overview of how a community-based assessment practice grew from adapting (with students) labor-based grading coupled with self-directed writing.
Instructional Note: Making It about XP Instead of Loot: Ungrading and Gameful Learning Design in First-Year Writing
This essay explores the pedagogical potential of using labor-based grading and gameful learning design in a first-year writing course at an open-access college in the Southeastern United States.
Instructional Note: Setting the Stage for a New Path Forward: Introducing an Alternative Grading Framework to Students
Introducing an alternative grading framework to students can be a challenge. Instructors might encounter student resistance confusion and frustration. To better help students understand both why moving away from traditional grading practices is important and how the classroom’s alternative assessment system functions this Instructional Note suggests centering dialogue students’ histories with grades and an overview of the classroom’s alternative grading practice during the first couple of weeks of class.
Information for Authors
The Equitable Classroom—Antiracist Assessment Starts Here
This article explores the connections between creating an equitable classroom and antiracist assessment. The article attempts to explain the impact of the equitable classroom on student apathy. Additionally rigid concepts of “failing” under this equitable classroom model are interrogated. Finally the article provides some insights into the limitations and pitfalls of the equitable classroom design.
Instructional Note: The Labor of Ungrading
This Instructional Note is for two-year college instructors who have attended conference presentations and read articles about the benefits of ungrading and want to know more about the pragmatics of teaching and how the shift to alternative assessment will affect their work.
Review: Cripping Labor-Based Grading for More Equity in Literacy Courses by Asao B. Inoue
Reducing Stress through Agency and Autonomy: Community College Student Perspectives on Labor-Based Contract Grading
The flexibility of labor-based contract grading allowed students in the study to make strategic intentional autonomous choices about the types of labor and products they produced. This strategic decision-making helped them to balance the workload requirements of their other classes employment and personal issues and laid important groundwork for students’ emerging autonomy.
Student Perspectives
Student Perspectives
Announcements
Guest Editors’ Introduction: Disrupting the Alternative Grading Narrative: Recognizing the Contributions of Two-Year College Teacher-Scholars
In this special issue introduction about alternative grading practices we argue that stories from two-year colleges and other underrepresented institutions matter. As our title suggests this special issue is an attempt to recognize the unrecognized and disrupt the dominant alternative assessment narrative. To meet the needs of all students especially those whose journeys include two-year colleges the field must find ways to elevate faculty voices from community colleges technical colleges and vocational colleges in conversations about pedagogical innovations including grading.
The Power of Wondering What Could Be School
Early in the 2023–2024 school year Mr. Medeiros and a handful of his Kaua’i High School Future Teachers of Hawai’i club members took a two-day huaka’i (trip) to Oahu. This service-learning trip was part of the learning progression for the club which is focused on student advocacy and social justice. With the help of Josh Reppun retired Hawai’i State Supreme Court Justice Mike Wilson the people at What School Could Be and other amazing educators the students began their huaka’i by gathering together to think and talk about the purpose of education/school. Ostensibly they were traveling to Oahu to learn from others but really the adults were there to learn how to keep pushing the boundaries of the idea of “school.”