Letting Go of Some Control
Using a course created by someone else
Contract Grading
What It Is:
Contract grading, or ungrading, is a relatively new concept to me. I had heard about some of the graduate students using this method a few semesters back when I acted as a GTA Evaluator for the English Department. In essence, a letter grade on an assignment is not given. Rather, an incomplete or complete grade is given for no points or full points, respectively. There is no adjustment to a given grade based on quality or correctness in the most basic way of contract grading. Essentially, the idea is that without the pressure of a grade, a student will do better on the assignment and understand the concepts as they build up towards the final larger project, such as a unit's final research paper. All of the assignments leading up to it such as a research plan, thesis statement post, summary of an article, etc., would be ungraded. My View of Using This Method: Since I used the 102 Inquiry into Pandemics Canvas course created by the Composition Office, I decided to leave the majority of the course unchanged. That included the ungraded assignments. While it did take some of the guesswork out of assigning a numerical grade on an assignment, I did find that the lack of any grade adjustments for errors, late work, missing sections, etc. really didn't accurately record how a student was doing with the materials. I did not see any improvement over the course of the semester. For the most part, students figured out the ungrading process pretty fast. They knew that if they answered the bare minimum for the work, they would receive a complete, and, therefore, the full points. Although one cannot know how much time or effort a student puts into working on an assignment, I think I can tell when more careful attention is given towards answering the question or problem or completing the task successfully. Surely, if only 1 section was missing, but the rest was done, shouldn't I be able to deduct a point or two for failure to complete the assignment? Under the contract grading, giving an incomplete for zero points in this circumstance would be unreasonable. And, full credit isn't right either. So, I still believe a better system is needed. There were also too many assignments in this course. Every Friday something would be due. Some times 3 assignments on a Friday. I think this is too much for students and too much for the teachers as giving detailed feedback on so many assignments for so many students becomes a Herculean task before the next stage of the unit. (In my case, I had 3 sections of 20 students each, which could mean 180 items to grade over the weekend.) I think many of the ungraded assignments would have worked well as in-class activities, so perhaps the Composition Office just reimagined them as assignments on Canvas. Either way, there were too many ungraded assignments that didn't accurately portray a student's achievements in the class. Next time, I would eliminate some work, or combine a few together (such as an introduction instead of a separate thesis statement and research plan), and I would only contract grade on things like a response to a video or a MLA citation exercise where there are more certain answers. |
Synchronous Classes and Zoom
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Jamboard for Breakout Rooms
What It Is:
Jamboard is a free, interactive whiteboard that is run by Google. Anyone with a Google account can set up a Jamboard. Essentially, it is like a PowerPoint with slides that you can edit in real time with a group online. So, after I went over the information about the unit with the class, we would divide up into breakout rooms and work on the Jamboard activity that I had prepared in advance. I'd place a couple of the PowerPoint slides at the beginning of the Jamboard to facilitate the activity and then each group would work on their assigned page. Here is an example: Things I Learned:
This is a great way to simulate in-class group work within the confines of Zoom. BUT, there are some catches and I found these out by trial and error. I'd like to save these observations to remind myself, but also to help others. 1. You should keep the Jamboard open on your browser in a separate tab so that you can click on it at any time during the Zoom meeting to see all of the boards at work in real time. It's quick to just click through each board to see who's done some work and who hasn't. Then, when you go into the breakout rooms, you can quickly check in with the groups that are making good progress, and then spend more time working with the groups that haven't put much on their Jamboard. 2. Once students are in the breakout rooms, they won't be able to click on the link for the Jamboard if you put it in the chat for the general meeting. So, BEFORE you put everyone in breakout rooms, place the Jamboard link in the chat, have everyone join the Jamboard, and THEN assign the breakout rooms. Each breakout room number should correspond with the group number on the slides that you'll place at the top in advance. You don't have to assign the groups in advance, just do a random assignment to the breakout rooms through Zoom. 3. Keep the link in a Canvas announcement, as well. Tell students that they can access the Jamboard should the Zoom meeting disconnect or they have trouble with Zoom. 4. Make sure to have an opening slide or two with info on what the activity is. That way students will know the expectations and can refer back to the activity directions easily. 5. When you're finished, post the end result in a Canvas announcement. Even though I would have everyone get back into the large class to present their findings, it's a bit difficult to follow the work on Zoom. So, being able to look at it after class is useful for some students. 6. It's only ONE part of a myriad of activities, lessons, and discussions that you're doing synchronously online. If it has some glitches, don't worry about it. The first time I incorporated a Jamboard, I made some mistakes with the order of doing things (See #2 above) and we spent a lot of time troubleshooting before it worked. But, the students and I worked together to get it up and running and the lesson was a success in the end. The next time I used it, it was even better and the students liked it, too. So, don't sweat the small stuff. Everyone has technical difficulties sometimes. |