Alt-Grading System
Table of contents
Youâre guaranteed at least a B+ as your final grade if you do everything thatâs asked of you in the spirit youâre asked to do it. But this doesnât mean anything goes! Read on for details.
Grading is the worst part of teaching (for me) and learning (for you). Grades cause anxiety, self-doubt, combativeness, plagiarism, and GenAI use. To counter this, I use an âungradingâ schema: a system that prioritizes learning over grades and rewards experimentation and even the screw-ups that happen when we try out what weâre learning.
Nothing in this class needs to be perfect or polished, but this doesnât mean anything goes. I canât measure how hard you feel you tried or give âeffort pointsâ for work that ignores the course material. I need measurable evidence of how youâre engaging in the class: e.g., frequency of participation, use of feedback, your writerly choices in assignments, etc.
Basic Checklist â
For you to earn at least a B+ in this class, you must:
- Complete all required activities and assignments by the deadline, within the 1-week grace period for late work (where permitted) after the original deadline, or by an alternate deadline that was arranged in advance with me
- Attempt to write nearly all of the components of required assignments at each stage of drafting
- Regularly incorporate feedback and what you learn in class in your assignments
- Show that youâre paying attention to the instructions, the readings, and feedback by thoughtfully making writerly decisions (choice of readings, interpretive approach, craft and style, etc.) in your assignments
- Regularly participate in voice chat and text chat every week
- Proactively try to figure things out on your own before chatting with me, scheduling coffee chats, and by bringing relevant notes, annotated readings, and writing materials to these meetings so we can work on them together
- Talk/post about what youâve learned when you participate each week: from the readings, from accumulating discussions and activities, from feedback, and/or from your peersâ posts (and try to participate even when you arenât sure youâre right!)
- Be open to critique and accountable for the work you did (or didnât do)
You can always check in with me if youâre unsure of how youâre doing!
If you do better on an ungraded draft than you do on a final submission, Iâll score that one instead. This lowers the stakes of drafting even further, allows you to take risks and âfail upâ without penalty, and more closely resembles what out-of-classroom drafting is really like: often âone step forward, two steps back,â recursive, nonlinear, never quite finished.
Participation đ
Youâre expected to regularly, substantively participate in voice and text channels, through thoughtful, informal contributions that reflect what weâre learning organically reacting/replying to classmates; doing classwork in a relatively timely fashion; and attending coffee chats.
Participation takes a lot of forms! While these are all measurable, valid forms of participation, youâre expected to participate in different ways throughout the semester:
- Talking out loud
- Posting on Discord during and outside of classtime
- Reading and writing with classmates in spaces/ways I can see/quantify
- Organically replying and reacting to classmatesâ posts (no boring âdiscussion boardâ-style replies, please!)
- Working with me in coffee chats
- Helping your classmates; DMing me thoughts and questions to add to my lecture notes
If thereâs another form that works for you, or if youâre anxious about whether youâre substantively participating enough, reach out to me so we can talk about it! After 5 weeks of low participation, weâll need to meet to discuss whether it makes sense for you to stay in the class or withdraw.
Assignments đ
Youâll produce both high-stakes (major, graded) and low-stakes (minor, ungraded) writing in this class.
Low-Stakes (Ungraded) Discord Posts #ď¸âŁ
Low-stakes writing is scored on the basis of completion. Submissions that actively engage with the material and are unafraid of âgetting things wrongâ on the way to figuring things out are accepted for full credit. If I canât accept a submission for credit for substantive reasons, Iâll DM you privately to let you know.
In short: Unless you hear otherwise from me, you know your submission received full credit.
Low-stakes writing work, i.e. responses to writing prompts or team activities on Discord, asks you to briefly organize your thoughts about assigned texts and how they use various craft techniques to accomplish the aims of social justice and/or imagine more socially just futures. I may also emoji react and/or reply to your posts to give you a sense of how Iâm interpreting your contributions.
Low-stakes writing that we do in class, i.e. discussion contributions, writing exercises, workshop critiques, etc. should be posted by the end of class unless stated otherwise. When you have low-stakes homework, youâll be asked to choose 1 prompt â from a rotating selection of the full list of Writing Prompts â and use it to guide your response to the materials for that week. Eligible prompts to choose from per week can be found on the Calendar.
Nothing in this class is busy work. Low-stakes work can be â is designed to be, even! â repurposed in your high-stakes projects, but you canât reuse the same pieces of writing across multiple assignments (unless the assignment asks you to scaffold or cumulatively build on them).
High-Stakes (Graded) Writing đ
High-stakes writing, i.e. first and final drafts of longer projects, should be submitted to Classes\Assignments and will be scored in Classes\Gradebook.
Drafts of high-stakes writing are scored on the basis of completion. Drafts that actively work towards the projectâs stated purpose, engage with the material, and are unafraid of âgetting things wrongâ on the way to figuring things out are accepted and will be marked âCrâ for âCredit.â If I canât accept a draft for credit for substantive reasons, Iâll mark it âNcâ for âNo Credit.â
This class has two high-stakes writing projects: an access audit and guide, and a creative project with an accompanying rationale. The assignment guidelines can be found on the Writing Prompts page.
The assessment criteria for the high-stakes projects are:
- You must have attempted to complete all parts of the assignment in good faith, i.e. thoughtfully and thoroughly
- You must engage with the texts we read in class in each high-stakes project, and you must use different texts in each high-stakes project
- Your forewords for both high-stakes projects should explain why writing these pieces like you did was the best way to get your aims across: the decisions youâre most proud of, most insecure about, and/or that most need an âin case readers donât get itâ explanation
- Your writing decisions (form, content, genre) in the creative project must enact and/or contribute to the argument
Deadlines & Grace Period đ
This grace period doesnât apply to a lack of participation, which canât be made up once the week has passed unless weâve made alternate arrangements, or to the final project, as I can only offer extensions past the end of the semester for documented emergencies or other extenuating circumstances.
I accept all writing assignments with no penalty or questions asked within 1 week of the original deadline (as long as they meet the rest of the assignment criteria). Please note that the grace period is time-bound, and Iâm unable to accept work on a rolling basis whenever around you get to it. I canât promptly review late work. I donât accept work more than 1 week late unless we made alternate arrangements in advance.