Ungrading: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know But Were Afraid to Ask

The world of higher ed. is all abuzz with the word "ungrading". You may have heard of the term, also referred to as "alternative grading", but what does it mean exactly? How can the practice of ungrading transform your teaching and your students' learning? In this episode, Angela and distinguished guests, Susan Blum, Katie Lee Bunting, Kasey Edwardson, and Jesse Stommel demystify all things ungrading. Among other topics, they discuss how they began the practice of ungrading and why, how they've seen it affect students and the quality of their learning, and what institutions can do to better support faculty who want to implement this transformative and empowering practice. Within this, practical steps and suggestions for faculty are also discussed.

CTEI extends a big thank you to our wonderful guests for their participation and empowering insights and recommendations!

Susan D. Blum is a professor of anthropology at the University of Notre Dame. Her work has roamed around the fields of cultural, linguistic, and psychological anthropology, in the context of China but most recently in the quest to understand the nature of institutional education. She is the editor of the collection Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead) (West Virginia University Press, 2020) and has just completed book 3 of her education trilogy, Schoolishness: Alienated Education and the Quest for Authentic and Joyful Learning. The previous two books were My Word! Plagiarism and College Culture (2009) and "I Love Learning; I Hate School": An Anthropology of College (2016), all published by Cornell University Press.

Katie Lee Bunting is a white settler, abled, and cis-gender woman. She is an Assistant Professor of Teaching in the Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy at the University of British Columbia. Katie is deeply grateful to the Musqueam First Nation on whose ancestral, traditional and occupied lands she works. She teaches in the Master of Occupational Therapy program and is the Curriculum Chair. Katie is a firm believer in values-based teaching, and unabashedly centres critical and relational approaches in her work. Outside of work, she is a mom to two young kids, and enjoys spending time with them, her senior dog, and her partner.

Kasey Edwardson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Clinical Laboratory Sciences at the University of Kansas Medical Center. She has taught at all levels of medical laboratory education programs, from associate’s in medical laboratory technology to doctorate in clinical laboratory sciences. Her PhD is in Educational Leadership and Higher Education, and her research focus is primarily on learner experiences and outcomes in medical laboratory education programs. 

Jesse Stommel is currently a faculty member in the Writing Program at University of Denver. He is also co-founder of Hybrid Pedagogy: the journal of critical digital pedagogy and Digital Pedagogy Lab (2015-2021). He has a PhD from University of Colorado Boulder. He is co-author of An Urgency of Teachers: the Work of Critical Digital Pedagogy. Jesse is a documentary filmmaker and teaches courses about pedagogy, film, digital studies, and composition. Jesse experiments relentlessly with learning interfaces, both digital and analog, and his research focuses on higher education pedagogy, critical digital pedagogy, and assessment. He’s got a rascal pup, Emily, a clever cat, Loki, and a badass daughter, Hazel. He’s online at jessestommel.com and on Twitter @Jessifer.

Episode transcript