MY SITE
Modified Contract Grading
After reading Asao Inoue's Labor-Based Grading Contracts in the summer of 2020, I became cognizant of the ways in which my own personal biases influenced my grading practices. While I agreed with Inoue's argument that a labor based assessment or a pass / fail system would produce more equitable grading practices, as a graduate teaching assistant in a First Year Writing program that used the same rubrice for all assignments, I wasn't in a place to make those kinds of changes to my course. Still, I felt it was important to find ways to minimize bias in my grading practice and to give students more opportunities to succeed.
My solution was a modified contract grading system.
Our department's rubric at the time described an A paper as,
"Your writing stands out because of one or more of the following characteristics: complexity, originality, seamless coherence, extraordinary control, sophistication in thought, recognizable voice, compelling purpose, imagination, insight, thoroughness, and/or depth."
The criteria for an A paper were vague and open to the interpretation of the individual instructor. The problem with this rubric is that instructor's interpretations are often affected by their own subjectivity, and there is a risk that the instructor will not clearly explain their expectations students. While it is important for students to know that a reader's subjectivity affects readers' reactions to any writing, I didn't see the value in students spending a significant amount of their bandwith learning to write just for me and my interpretation of what an A meant.
So rather than spending a significant amont of time defining what I meant by an A, I had students assess their own writing and writing processes instead. The 10% of their grade that would normally determine if they wrote an A paper became theirs to judge. To assess their work, I asked students to set two goals at the beginnings of their paper. They let me know how they would assess themselves in their goal setting assignment. Once the paper was finished, students reflected on their goals and assessed if they had met them.
To respect students' agency, I only intervened on a student's judgement once when a student marked herself at a 5/10 because she had not been able to meet a daily writing goal while she was sick with Covid-19. We discussed how she could give herself more credit for adapting to unforeseen circumstances.
Below are my guidelines for students' self assessment, infographic resources I gave students for planning their goals, and examples of students' goals and assessments.
My solution was a modified contract grading system.
Our department's rubric at the time described an A paper as,
"Your writing stands out because of one or more of the following characteristics: complexity, originality, seamless coherence, extraordinary control, sophistication in thought, recognizable voice, compelling purpose, imagination, insight, thoroughness, and/or depth."
The criteria for an A paper were vague and open to the interpretation of the individual instructor. The problem with this rubric is that instructor's interpretations are often affected by their own subjectivity, and there is a risk that the instructor will not clearly explain their expectations students. While it is important for students to know that a reader's subjectivity affects readers' reactions to any writing, I didn't see the value in students spending a significant amount of their bandwith learning to write just for me and my interpretation of what an A meant.
So rather than spending a significant amont of time defining what I meant by an A, I had students assess their own writing and writing processes instead. The 10% of their grade that would normally determine if they wrote an A paper became theirs to judge. To assess their work, I asked students to set two goals at the beginnings of their paper. They let me know how they would assess themselves in their goal setting assignment. Once the paper was finished, students reflected on their goals and assessed if they had met them.
To respect students' agency, I only intervened on a student's judgement once when a student marked herself at a 5/10 because she had not been able to meet a daily writing goal while she was sick with Covid-19. We discussed how she could give herself more credit for adapting to unforeseen circumstances.
Below are my guidelines for students' self assessment, infographic resources I gave students for planning their goals, and examples of students' goals and assessments.
Student Reactions to Modified Contract Grading
I followed up with students with an an anonymous survey to understand thier perspective on modified contract grading. Almost 89% of my students responded to the survey. Overall, students responded positively to the modified contract grading, as can be seen in a section from the survey below.
While there is an overwhelmingly positive response to the modified contract grading format, I think that it's important to recognize where students were hesitant. Some felt that they were harsh critics of themselves and others graded themselves relatively inflexible, like my student who was sick with Covid-19 or Student 5 who deducted a point for finding a new, more productive study spot when they had committed to working in the library. While I plan on using this assignment structure in the future, I will be modifying content guidelines so that students are more aware of my support for them using their assessment flexibly so that they can respond to changing circumstances and reward themselves for learning what does not work for their writing process.
What Students Had to Say
"I actually like it a lot. It helps push me to be honest about my work. Right now, it is kind of hard to keep to goals because you never know what type of obstacle is going to be thrown in your way, but it helps us practice adapting to changes" "I like being able to have a say over 10% of my grade, and I like setting goals that I know are going to help me." |
"I think it is a really important element of the projects that we have done, as it requires us to go back and check ourselves on how closely we are sticking to our original intentions with the project. I think making this process 10 percent of the project's final grade challenges us to be honest with ourselves with our writing process and the amount of effort we truly spent sticking to our goals. " |
"I think knowing that following these goals is a portion of the final grade forces me to check back on them throughout the drafting and editing, which has resulted in better results in my writing. "