I love the Teaching & Learning Conference Elon University has each year. While I miss going to their beautiful campus, I was glad that the experience was virtual AND recorded this year. I was able to catch a couple of sessions today, though I missed the keynote by James Lang.
Christopher M. Jones, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Washburn University, presented on “The Impact of Ungrading on Student Motivation and Persistence.” Jones started by doing an activity in which participants used their hands and fingers, and Jones listed different ungrading strategies. As he mentioned them, we put down fingers. Most participants had between 4-6 fingers left at the end of the activity. Then Jones asked us to share “ungrading” practices. Next, Jones talked about the history of grades and motivation. Jones defined motivation as “the energy that a person has to engage in a task and to complete it” with intrinsic motivation being “inherent satisfaction” and extrinsic “directed toward and by a ‘separable outcome.’ I had not heard these two intrinsic and extrinsic definitions. In addition, Jones mentioned that “students learn best when they experience intrinsic motivation” and extrinsic “actually disrupts task mastery.” Grades promote a fear of failure was a point on a slide Jones shared. He explained that students are not motivated after receiving low grades, and that grades promote competence at the expense of mastery: grades promote doing the minimum to get the grade they want. Citing Butler and Nisan (1986), Jones stated that “students only paid attention to qualitative feedback if they did not receive grades.” I had heard this in another session this year, and it has made me think.
Jones did an ungrading pilot for the World Religions class with two sections and a total enrollment of 54. The class was fully remote over Zoom, and the assessments were weekly reflections (only qualitative feedback – no grades), midterm and final reflective assessments, and a final self-reflection. Jones had the hypothesis that “ungrading would lead to students feeling more intrinsic motivation to do their work for my class, which in turn would lead to higher rates of attendance, work completion, and persistence to credit.” Jones compared a Fall 2020 class to the Spring 2021 class. In the fall, 69.61% attended class, and in the spring 81.1%. With grades, 61.24% completed assignments, and without grades, 68.68% attended. Jones concluded that students felt more motivated based on qualitative data shared by participants. Jones mentioned having to fight with the Learning Management System (LMS) system not to put grades down. Also, Jones mentioned experiencing some resistance from peers. Some questions in the chat were how does this play out for general/introductory courses and upper-division. I appreciate how Jones shared preliminary results of this pilot ungrading course in a religious study class. While many factors complicate the analysis of the results, the findings suggest that motivation and course assignment completion is not affected by not having grades.
The next session was entitled “Learning About Learning: Effects of Metacognitive Journaling on Self-Reported Metacognitive Behaviors” by Shaun P. Vecera, Professor in the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, University of Iowa, and Jessica M. Bowden, Graduate Student, College of Education, University of Iowa. Vecera discussed the characteristics of effective learners by stating that effective learners use metacognition: reflect on, direct, and control their thinking. Less effective learners “don’t set goals, don’t decompose problems, and don’t monitor learning/progress.” Vecera then reviewed some of the history of metacognition research, saying metacognition is hard. People in the chat shared strategies they use in courses, including retrieval practice, quizzing themselves, trying problems without looking at the examples… Vecera tried in an online asynchronous class metacognitive journals. In their Learning about Learning class, the goal is “building students’ learning habits around the three Ms: mindset, metacognition, and memory” I like the 3 Ms! Students in the course mentioned in a Letter to a Future Student the ability to self-regulate and reflect. Vecera mentioned that qualitatively students seem to self-reflect. They used the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ Pintrich et al. 1991, 1994). They modified the questionnaire to administer in the first and last week of class. I did not know about the MSLQ and learned how this study was set up. I find this valuable as the questionnaire was developed decades ago, and Vecera and colleagues adapted it and thought carefully about the study’s assignments and goals. I want to go back and view some of the recordings to learn other suggestions, survey instruments, and research shared at this event!
