Camosun Story #112: Brandon

Brandon began at Camosun 20 years ago, as a student in the same department where he now teaches: Computer Science. “I went out into industry after graduating, was self employed for 20 years, but after the pandemic I had a pivot moment and was given an opportunity to teach here. I wasn’t sure if it would be a great fit, but it turned out that I love teaching. I love mentoring and giving back to the next generation of people in computer science. And now I’ve been here three and a half years.”

I asked Brandon what courses he teaches. “As a generalist, I can teach many of the courses in our programs, but I specialize in web technologies, so typically I teach first-year students in web fundamentals and web scripting, and second-year students in web application development. I’ve also taught database, server administration and other fundamental technology essentials.” Brandon teaches in both the Interactive Media Developer Diploma (IMD) program and the Information and Computer Systems Technology Diploma program, and sees students right out of high school, international students, as well as people who are looking for a career change.

After hearing him say how much he loved teaching, I wondered what it was about it that Brandon enjoyed most. “I love seeing new students eager to be here on the first day and the energy that entails, then moving them from that initial energy and excitement to two years later when they’ve proudly completed a project for industry, and knowing you had a part of that journey. Then there are those in-the-moment connections you make with the students when you see those aha moments.”

Last summer, Brandon participated in the Working Together: Indigenizing Your Course program with Natasha Parrish and Charlotte Sheldrake. “I’ve been curious adopting a more holistic approach in my teaching mainly because of my IMD students who tend to be open and curious. During the program, I chose the Circle of Courage as my Indigenization framework. That framework has the student move through four phases of a journey, starting from belonging and mastery and moving through independence and generosity.” You may wonder how that meshes with creating programs and web pages, and Brandon explained. “At the beginning of their lab block, students think about what they’ve been learning throughout the week, engage in self-reflection, and ask and answer questions in small groups, like a sharing circle, but asking questions based upon content mastery or working towards independence, as well as sharing how their week has gone in terms of their course work. And through that process of sharing, students learn from each other. I’ve had more than one student comment that this was the best part of the course because they heard other perspectives, which helped them when they were struggling. Other students were grateful because they thought they were alone in their thinking but now realized that other students were feeling the same way.”

I wondered which courses Brandon had Indigenized using this framework. “My plan was to do it just with the second-year courses, because I had already built trust with those students in earlier courses. But I thought, maybe I could try it with the first-year courses as well. And it turns out that those first-year students were just as game to give it a try as the second years.” And while the second-year group was already cohesive, Brandon has found that the first-year students he worked with last term have become even more cohesive than that second-year group. And this winter term, Brandon is integrating this framework in all his courses. What he has learned is that “you don’t need to work with a group you have already built trust with. You just need to be confident and detail the reason behind the framework, and now I have seen the positive impacts of making space for students to ask questions course concepts, and how what they’re learning contributes to the entire group becoming stronger together.”

I wondered how Brandon integrated this framework worked in his classrooms. “It’s impossible to rearrange our computer labs to create a circle. So, I ask everybody to stand and the people in the center to move around to the outside edges. Then for ten-minutes we move counterclockwise, everybody taking their turn and listening. For the bigger questions, we break into smaller groups, and I ask them to sit in circles with their computer chairs as best we can.” But Brandon wanted to also mention that his students still complete all their labs in lab time. “We still get everything done, but our time in circle means they’re having a better time of it and are more connected. And I, myself, was energized right through to week 13 of the course.”

I asked if Brandon had shared his experiences with his fellow faculty members. “I have talked with my colleagues about how I’ve Indigenized my courses – it’s not been a huge leap for me so I’m sharing enthusiastically with them. Whether any of them will try something like this, I don’t know. I’m a relatively new instructor and am taking the Provincial Instructor Diploma Program, so I’m in learning mode, but I can appreciate that everyone has their own tried and true methods of teaching.”

In addition to Indigenizing his courses, Brandon has also been working with Ungrading. “A faculty member in our department, Melissa Mills, had been working with Ungrading in her course and last summer, I borrowed her book on it to learn more. At first, I was not impressed, but before I finished the first chapter, I knew how I could implement Ungrading in my courses.” Because many students in Brandon’s program experience a lot of anxiety these days, he wondered if taking away grades would alleviate some of that anxiety. “As I read the examples in the book, I realized that Ungrading is not about awarding students with a letter grade. Rather, it’s about supporting students to gain a better understanding of their own capabilities which will then help them succeed in industry.”

When Brandon returned to work in August, he worked to move one of his courses to an Ungraded model. “In my labs, I already worked students to mastery. While there are marks assigned, students all have the opportunity to get ten out of ten. For example, if there’s something wrong with their submission, I would ask questions to probe their comprehension, give them feedback, and they resubmit their work based on that feedback.” But then Brandon added a self-assessment component to the guided part of the course. “At week five and week ten, I sat down with each student to ask a series of questions to get them to think about their work in the course, including: Where do you feel you are for comprehension? What sort of grade would you give yourself so far? How much time are you dedicating towards study and labs? Where are you feeling weak and where are you feeling strong? Was everybody accurate? No. In fact, the majority of the class underestimated their abilities.” Brandon likened his course to learning how to drive, where this part of the course represented reading the driving manual and taking the knowledge test. But you still have to do the road test, which in his course is the final exam. By checking in with students at weeks five and ten, Brandon could help them see how prepared they would be for that road test. “I also asked them to self-assess their work on the final exam, but I would also assess them and compared my assessment with theirs and most students assessed themselves within 3-4% of my assessment, and if someone was way off base, we would have a conversation about that and suggest ways for them to move forward.”

Brandon cautioned that while many people think that Ungrading is less work than traditional assessment, “that one-on-one mentorship for the labs and the final exam is the same amount if not more work. But, while giving that feedback and thoughtfully moving each student to their next step may be more work, the payoffs are that the students have a better understanding of where they sit as far as proficiency. I will also say that the grades given under Ungrading were much more accurate than they were when I used a simple rubric without considering comprehension. I also found that students appreciated the fact that it wasn’t about me taking points away from them which could result in wearing down their motivation, but rather about giving them the opportunity to improve and work towards mastery.” And that working to mastery is something Brandon working to integrate in all his courses now.

For the most part, student reactions were positive, but some students can be uneasy because they have never experienced anything like Ungrading before. For those students, while Brandon encourages them to try, he says “if being Ungraded adds additional stress, I will grade students in the traditional sense, if that’s what they need. In the end, we’re here to help the students complete their programs, but if we can build in additional skills like critical self reflection, wouldn’t that be great for industry? Or building better human skills in the case of the Indigenous learning framework. Can you imagine building that into a workplace?” Our programs don’t have to be only about their topics and content.

More instructors in Brandon’s department are considering Ungrading for assessments, perhaps partly as a reaction to GenAI. He says, “I would argue that it is much harder for students using GenAI tools to succeed in an Ungraded course than a traditionally graded course, because those tools prevent students from gaining the foundational skills necessary to complete the assignments, and if we require those students to critically self-reflect on their comprehension, they will struggle to answer the questions we ask.”

I asked Brandon what advice he might have for faculty wanting to Indigenize their courses or integrate Ungrading. “You don’t have to get it right the first time. Indigenization will lead to a more fulfilling, enriched experience for you and your students, because of the connections it makes and the lightbulb moments you see from the students. Try something small like guided labs or just 5 minutes at the beginning of a lab to sit and ask students about their experience because they are going through that experience together and building community together can result in a better environment, and hopefully a better outcome for the course. It’s okay to be brave and try new things, even with baby steps.”

As we came to the end of our conversation, Brandon added some final words. “I’m grateful I was able to explore Indigenization and Ungrading for my courses, and for the supportive faculty within the college who have been a sounding board for my ideas.” And while some people might think that technology programs are not the best fit for Indigenization, it’s even more important to bring out human aspect in courses like these, where the humanity is often hidden. “In the end, adding these human approaches into our teaching, can make classroom experience much more rewarding.”

Camosun Story #73: Helen

Helen is a Co-op and Internship Coordinator (CIC) with the Technology programs at Camosun, as well as Chair for Cooperative Education.  Helen has been working in post secondary education for most of her career and explained, “I have always been interested in the teaching and learning process, even when I was in administrative or coordination roles. And I am particularly interested in experiential education and reflective learning, or work-integrated learning which is how co-op fits in.”

Part of Helen’s work as a CIC is to teach a Career Development Workplace Preparation Skills course, known as CDEV.  “CDEV is a competency-based course teaching students about career development that includes assessing one’s own interests, skills and abilities; understanding the world of work; and connecting with professionals, and opportunities, in industry.” Helen also noted that for her program area, CDEV is a requirement for graduation, meaning that not all students are keen to take it.

Because CDEV is required, Helen sometimes finds teaching it challenging. “Ideologically, I want people to learn, not just finish with a grade.  But it’s challenging to engage students meaningfully when they are motivated by the technology aspects of their program and are very busy in their courses.

Most of the assignments in CDEV are not graded – with the exception of the cover letter and resumé, with a requirement of achieving 70% or higher to complete the course.   A strong cover letter and resume is the biggest artifact coming out of CDEV for students.  After Helen heard about ungrading, she had a conversation with Robin Fast and thought it “might be a solution to some of the tensions I was experiencing” around student engagement and grading that assignment within a pass/fail course.  “I love to try out new things, so last fall I decided to scrap the itemized rubric for the cover letter and resumé and made it more qualitative. I still had grades, but used a binary method where One was ‘you’ve met the requirements’ and Zero was ‘you need to keep working on it.’”

Helen anticipated my next question; how did it go? “It’s a work in progress and I need to refine things for next time. What I found is that ungrading didn’t seem to give students enough direction. Part of me thinks I may have removed some incentives by removing the quantitative rubric. When it was clear that the requirement to pass was 70 out of 100, they had incentive to work harder, even though I would tell them not to do it for the grade.”

A piece of ungrading that supported the workplace preparation and student engagement aspects of CDEV was the feedback component, which in ungrading is typically formative and collaborative.  “Students need to learn how receive feedback and to be able to adapt based on feedback.   While I had always incorporated peer feedback into class activities, I required students to submit their feedback along with their application documents so I could help them be accountable to the feedback they received. And thanks to Robin, I implemented audio feedback for students, which was a way for me to provide personal commentary about their submissions.”  One problem she encountered was that while “students were allowed to resubmit their documents as many times as they needed to, many of them seemed to disregard the feedback that was given. It almost seemed that without a grade, feedback did not matter.”

One aspect of ungrading Helen particularly appreciates is the focus it brings to building relationships in the classroom. “I feel that this experience with ungrading enhanced my relationships with students and contributed to a wonderful communal learning experience. In fact, I heard more than once that the peer reviews and the discussions in class and enabled students to better connect with each other if I can get them to talk to the student next to them, that’s a win!”

Helen reminded me that “these students are in a grueling and competitive program, and I like to think that CDEV supports them to excel at a personal level, because CDEV is all about them. I believe if I can boost their confidence through CDEV, that will also be good for their career. And because their success is based on the choices they make, I’d like them to choose to be successful, not be reliant on a grade as a measure of success. That’s why ungrading appeals to me as a principle.”

What is the future of ungrading for Helen?  “I’m going to keep it with some refinements. I think when you do something new you should give it more than just one try. Not everyone is comfortable with trying new things and possibly failing, but if something you try works out, then others may be willing to try it out too. In the end, our goals are to help our students succeed in their careers and prepare them for the real world.” And Helen believes many of ungrading aspects, like reflection and collaborative feedback, can support those goals.

Camosun Story #72: Robin and Ungrading

You may remember Robin from such stories as Camosun Story #7 (SO long ago) and Becoming Unravelled: a reflection.  Robin is both a faculty member in the Community, Family & Child Studies (CFCS) program as well as an Educational Developer in the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning.  A few weeks ago, I sat down with Robin to talk about his journey into ungrading, foreshadowed by his Unravelled post.

“This journey for me began when I started with CETL last year. I facilitated the book club with a book about ungrading already assigned, and then wrote my reflection blog post. But for awhile now I’ve been grappling with how to make sure everything I do aligns with my principles of teaching and learning, and wondering how we can grade students for their efforts when grading is not at all an objective measurement of their learning.”

Robin’s work with the book club clarified that he was not alone in struggling with having to assign grades. “Students are supposed to make mistakes, try things out, and practice” and grading them at every step along the way may not encourage them to continue in that ongoing learning whether that grade is “good” or not.  And when Robin read the ungrading book he realized that he had already been doing quite a bit of ungrading. “For example, in the CFCS diploma, we have practicum courses that aren’t graded – those courses are assessed as complete or not complete and the assignments all align with that. Students are expected to meet learning outcomes to a level where they’re ready to practice independently in the community.  So, if an assignment doesn’t reflect that ability, we ask them to redo it and explain how they can improve.” But what Robin realized was that the other courses students take were not preparing them for that practicum learning experience, although within those graded courses, Robin was providing assignments that were NOT graded.  “For example, if students are doing presentations, they will for the most part receive an A because they are taking a risk by standing up and speaking and you don’t want to discourage them.”  But the conversations Robin had in book club helped him realize that ungrading was important for every assignment. As a result, Robin decided to move a class he had taught many times completely into the world of ungrading for the following Fall term.

“The course I ungraded is CFCS 110, Foundations for Practice, and is a first semester course in a two-year diploma program. Melissa (another ungrader) shared some examples of wording she used to describe ungrading to students, and I made some modifications to my course using those examples. I got rid of any of the one and done assignments and made sure all assignments were formative.” Robin noted that ungrading research discusses how ungrading is both positive for students and disruptive, because it is a radical change from how they are used to being assessed. Communicating clearly and regularly with students is, therefore, essential to build their comfort with ungrading.  “At the very beginning of the course, I described the ungrading process to students and gave them a document describing the reasons for ungrading, what some of the problems are with grading, and why this could be valuable to their learning. I explained that I would give them regular feedback on their assignments, but they wouldn’t receive a letter grade for their assignments. I also clarified how redoing assignments would work to meet the course expectations.”

Robin chose to provide audio feedback to students so that they could hear his voice explaining clearly what he saw that they were doing well in the assignment, and places that they could improve for the next assignment or for a resubmission if that was needed. “Audio feedback is easy to create, can be more detailed, and supports building a relationship with the learner much better than written feedback.”

Robin also met with students individually right before the midpoint of the course, taking class time to do so. “That took a couple weeks to complete.  I intended to meet again with each of them towards the end of the semester, but I did not manage that this time around.” While time consuming, Robin feels this piece of the switch to ungrading is critical, to build trust in the feedback process, and making sure he was always following through with his commitments to them.

Because self-reflection is an important component in ungrading, Robin had his students reflect on their progress at both the midpoint and the end of the course. “When you ask students to assign a letter grade for themselves, you reserve the right to adjust it, which opens the door to a conversation if there’s disagreement.”  Robin asks things like: How do you see yourself progressing over the semester? Have you responded to feedback from one assignment for the next? “In my past courses students have often been dragged down by a weak assignment at the beginning of the semester meaning their final grade may not reflect where they’ve come to by the end of the semester. None of that is a factor with the ungrading process because their letter grade is based on how they see themselves progressing and what they’ve learned by the end of the course.”

Whether you use ungrading or not, students need to receive a letter grade, and Robin wondered how students would assess themselves – would they all give themselves an A+?  “I came to two conclusions. First was that letter grades, no matter how hard we try, are subjective measures of something, and not necessarily learning, so why am I worried about what grade students are assigning? Second was that research says students are typically harder on themselves with their grades that we are, and I found that was true in many cases, where students assigned themselves a letter grade which was lower than I would have.”

Robin also puzzled over the disconnect between ungrading and having to assign a grade.  “If I tell students that the letter grade system is subjective for instructors to assign, how can I expect them to assign themselves a grade? So, I discussed that apparent contradiction with students and provided them with a clear rubric. And I know some ungrading instructors will build that rubric with students, so they have even more of an understanding of what it is that they’re working towards.” Another challenge Robin has with letter grades is how they turn education into something that is ranked.  “In real life, after they complete college, students will go to work, get feedback on the work they do, and use that feedback to improve – that’s the way our whole world works.  So why don’t we make sure that we’re aligning that with how we’re teaching here?”

Robin was happy with how his first foray into ungrading went. “I received positive feedback from students both during the course and at the end. In fact, I had one student tell me that she felt like she had never learned in school before, but now she felt like she was learning.  She could focus on the content and not worry about meeting the instructor’s expectations in order to get the right grade.”

Even beyond improving student learning, Robin found that “the process of reviewing student assignments and giving them feedback was so much more enjoyable and productive than it has been for me in the past. Being able to simply focus in on the feedback, and not have to worry about how my feedback connected with a letter grade, wasn’t only freeing, but it was much better aligned with how I see effective education.” And students were excited to receive his feedback.  “Students told me that in the past they have been anxious and worried about looking at their feedback, but now they were looking forward to it so that they could improve their next assignment.”

I asked Robin if he had spoken to any of his colleagues about ungrading. “Colleagues agree with me about the incongruity between letter grades and the work we’re trying to do as instructors. But they wonder: Will students be motivated? Will they be confused by the lack of grading? But the nice thing about ungrading is that there are many ways to implement it.” Although Robin cautions, implementing ungrading is more work for the students. “Students may be redoing an assignment instead of just moving on to the next one and reflecting on their experience and learning process. But I’ve never had such consistent attendance as I had this last semester, probably because the assignments were designed such that students needed to be in the classroom, engaging with the material and each other, in order to successfully complete them.”

I wondered what advice Robin might have for faculty wanting to try out some ungrading. “I’m really privileged because in my program, there are no multiple sections of classes and faculty are all working with the same cohort of students, so we don’t have the pressure for every course section to be similar. But I think there are some guiding principles that are helpful. First, be transparent. Talk with your students about what you’re doing and why, laying it out clearly for them and following through with your commitments to them.” Second, start small.  “Try revising one or two assignments to be ungraded rather than your entire course.”  And third, consider the time commitment. Set expectations on how often you meet with students and discuss feedback with them, as well as due dates for resubmitted assignment to help you manage your time.

What is the future of ungrading for Robin? “I have a hard time imagining myself not using it in the future. Next time I teach a letter grade course my plan is to ungrade it. If I can do it in a first semester course, I can do it anywhere else in the program. And I will continue to talk with my colleagues about if and where they might want to try ungrading out.”  But will he change anything?  “Yes. There were quite a few students at the end of the semester who still had to resubmit assignments, so I need to be clearer about the resubmission process to help students stay on track a bit better. And I want to find space for more individual meetings with students.”

In the end, Robin says he was surprised, but gratified, to see the shift in how students responded to assignment feedback.  “I didn’t change the way I was giving feedback – audio feedback, focusing on positives – I just removed the grade and thus the pressure on students. The only difference was removing that letter grade.”