I just think the conversation about grades is stale. Let’s not talk about whether a paper is an A or a B. Believing that the process is the point means not caring so much about that, anyway. Let’s talk about whether the credentialed applicant knows, or knows how to do, anything that an app doesn’t.
In the absence of institutional leadership or professional organization, it’s been tacitly assumed that the burden of getting students to learn falls on individual teachers. I see no good reason for that assumption, and some real stakes for students both in learning and in being seen to do so.
It’s likewise tacitly assumed that assisted-thinking technology in specific and the phenomenon of education in general puts students against teachers, rather than both against assisted thinking and the wider evisceration of higher ed. Again, the necessity of thinking this way is unclear to me.
None of this excuses the glaring absence of both professional organization and institutional leadership, by the way. But if students truly have no stake of their own in learning, it’s not clear why it’s every individual instructor’s duty to supply it on their behalf. That would seem a hopeless case.
louder for the back, ted.
we are reduced to 2 questions - 1. is learning good? & 2. is lying bad? Pedagogical choices / course design / university policies should be guided by those questions. as in, the issue isn't "how to catch my students lying about their use of thing" but rather why "should lying be part of learning"
I’ve always wanted to try the move to un-grading but to really do the work to emphasize and focus on process, there needs to be the space to take those pedagogical risks. The uni model often does not allow for that and neither does precarity.