Grades, Feedback, and Projects

From a previous post where I shared three articles from my pocket, Anna Blinstein made the following insightful and important comment:

While I totally agree about the incompatibility of traditional testing methods and inquiry-based teaching, I wonder how we might change assessment on a large scale. For teachers with large class sizes, how realistic is to ask them to move away from pencil-and-paper traditional tests of content skills? I have been teaching in independent schools most recently and even with small class sizes, it takes me eons to grade written projects and reflections and give detailed feedback that's not an average percentage. I have no idea how this might be scaled up. And this isn't even touching the issue of "giving up curriculum." The level of trust for teachers and students that would have to exist for the curriculum to be purely project-based and determined even in part by student interest is astronomical. How would we make that happen? 

And thanks for summarizing the articles :)

*Note* this was initially drafted as a response to her comment, but it ended up being too big, and involved too many links...and so I figured it might as well be a post.

These questions are a big part of my motivation for doing research in the first place, and so I want to thank you for bringing it to the forefront.  I don't think I have a firm grasp on a satisfying answer, but I will offer some thoughts since I believe these to be important questions and dilemmas that we teachers face.

Let me provide a poor analogy first before commenting on the questions.  Suppose our goal was to reach the moon.  There are all sorts of issues that challenge this goal with respect to resources, politics, sufficient scientific knowledge...etc.  It's easy to be intimidated - turn back and save the money, grief, difficulties.  But I think the purpose drives the mission.  It's worth doing because it benefits people in different ways.  It's worth doing and so we work to conquer the challenges.

I had (and still have) similar questions as you, and I saw them not as setbacks, but challenges to overcome.

I suppose above is just a side note addressing how important and valuable I think these questions are... I am in no way assuming that you are saying that this isn't worth doing or suggesting that we shouldn't do it because it's hard.  In any case - enough rambling.

I will attempt to structure my response around three closely related areas: grades, feedback, and projects.  I will also attempt to touch upon the topic of projects.

Grades:
While I completely agree with Kohn's objections to grades (for example in the article Schooling Beyond Measure or his book chapter the trouble with carrots from Punished by Rewards), I also recognize the immediate reality of us teachers having to provide grades for institutional and societal purposes in the current educational systems.  Kohn offers these four pieces of advice on what NOT to do when providing grades:

1. Refrain from giving a letter or number grade for individual assignments, even if you are compelled to give one at the end of the term...
2. Never grade students while they are still learning something and, even more important, do not reward them for their performance at that point...
3. Never grade on a curve...
4. Never give a separate grade for effort...

So those's some things that I found useful to think about with respect to what NOT to do.  With respect to what to do, I am thinking the following:

What goes into a grade must be a combination and integration of a large variety of different forms of learning evidence at different points in time.  There is a buzz surrounding standard-based grading, and I think it's a helpful step towards better organizing the different evidence of learning.  For me, this means including observations of student learning, as well as student conversations that have demonstrated understanding, beyond tests and other written products.

In conference marking with other teachers from the district, sometimes we exchange test papers to examine the effectiveness of the rubrics we were using, as well as practice identifying different levels of achievement for a certain expectation (Ontario, Canada has expectations, where in the states, I believe you have the CCSS).  When asked by another teacher "what would you give this student," I am always a bit troubled.  I hesitate to view the student product as a stand-alone artefact.  While I may be able to identify how the piece of work matches the criteria outlined in a rubric, my judgement would ultimately be incomplete without having deeper knowledge on the students' understanding.  If a question was left blank, for example, does the student not understand the concept? the question? the wording? or perhaps s/he didn't see the question? didn't have time to do it?  In the area of assessment and evaluation, I think our strength and importance as teachers is not in how accurately we can place a piece of student work on a grading scale.  Instead, for a certain topic, it's in how we can place a piece of student work amidst the context of the individual student's learning - with respect to his/her other achievements in that topic, relationships to other topics, other forms of evidence (e.g. observations of his/her attempts for understanding).

How do we do this?  It's a logistical nightmare! Record keeping is definitely daunting, but I believe it to be a worthwhile endeavor.  In the past I have found programs and apps such as ThreeRing and SesameIO to be useful for collecting pieces of student learning and student achievement.  More recently I've also heard about Pear Deck which I am excited to hear Chris Robinson talk about tonight at Global Math Department, and will certainly think about assessment and feedback opportunities once I learn more.  I see grading as presenting a single picture of an asystematic collection of evidence throughout a semester.  Kind of like collecting puzzle pieces and putting it together under a time constraint, and then taking a picture of the incomplete puzzle when the time is up.

It makes sense to me, then, that we should collect as many pieces as possible in as many different ways as possible.

Feedback:
It takes me eons to provide written feedback that is descriptive as well.  Especially with large classes.  I've thought about several things concerning this.

First, (and you can probably guess this suggestion from the previous parts of this response) I don't think written feedback is the only way to go.  I'd like to think that we provide feedback all the time to students.  When we ask probing questions to groups during explorations, or when we facilitate answers during consolidation...etc... we are also giving feedback on what students understand.  Written feedback sometimes run the risk of students not even bother reading it.  I have often heard teachers justify a lack of descriptive feedback by indicating that students don't read them anyway.  There are indications that feedback that are "comments only" produce greater learning gains, so there are ways of getting students to focus more on the feedback.  But I think there is only this problem if we are forced to focus only on written products.  How often do we say "that was an excellent discussion, guys, I will give you an A-, and you an A+ for that" after listening to student conversations?  I'd like to think that we don't do that.  So what do we do with projects with an attached written product, then?  In terms of providing written feedback, I haven't really found a suitable replacement.  I've tried using Google drive (since I type faster), or printing feedback on paper and attaching it to their work.  Recently I have also thought about just making quick videos about me discussing their work (the screen would face their written work, while I comment and make suggestions).  I am unsure as to how I would go about doing this... but I do think it has potential.  Even though I type faster than I hand-write, I definitely can talk faster than I type.

But for a project that has a written result, I don't think the final product is the only thing that we can comment on.  Throughout the students' journey with the project, there are a ton of opportunities for us to provide feedback to them.

Projects:
Okay... now I will attempt to ramble something to respond to the last part of your comment

The level of trust for teachers and students that would have to exist for the curriculum to be purely project-based and determined even in part by student interest is astronomical. How would we make that happen? 

It is definitely huge.  Someone like Alex Overwijk would say that "If you want to make a massive change in your class, make it massive.  If you make a small step, you'll be pulled back to the way you were."

In other words: "Just do it."

I am unsure if I can be as extreme, but I actually think that's a good starting point.  If we consider a curriculum that is purely project-based as the only way to go, then we would have no choice but to make it great.  But let me step back a bit.  I actually am in support of the general concept of inquiry-based learning where projects are one manifestation of what might encourage this.  I don't think it has to be all projects (but then I guess it depends on how you define projects), I think it can be interspersed with smaller-scale problem solving sessions.  Currently my vision of a course would mostly play out similar to #3act structure and with projects that run alongside that are more student-generated and interest/passion-oriented.

I don't think I can provide answers for all the teachers that want to try to modify their craft, and I don't think I should attempt to.  I think the only recommendation would be similar to Al's advice of "just do it" but to the degree of comfort level that is suitable for the teacher in the context of their cultural or political situations.  In other words, I am suggesting a diagram that would look more like this:

In other words, instead of jumping all the way, draw a line for yourself where there is no turning back - wherever that line might be.  The squiggly lines represent exploration of different ways of reaching your ideal.  I am unsure that there is one place where the ideal resides... but I guess I will leave the diagram as is for now.

I am hoping these comments were, at least in part, helpful.  Thank you again for the comment, it gave me an opportunity to organize my thoughts a bit more.