How to Ungrade

Author(s): Stommel, J.
Date: 2018
Publication:
Citation: Stommel, J. (2018). How to Ungrade. https://www.jessestommel.com/how-to-ungrade/.
Section on webpage: Ungrading
Tenets: Using technology intentionally to build communities and enhance learning.
Annotation: The author describes ungrading, its history, and how to practice this theory in the classroom. Grading began in the 1780s but was not widely used until the 1940s. As the author argues, a system adapted so recently can easily be dismantled. Other approaches to assessing students include grade free zones, self-assessment, process letters, minimal grading, authentic assessment, contract grading, portfolios, peer-assessment, and student-made rubrics.

 

An Urgency of Teachers: the Work of Critical Digital Pedagogy

Author(s): Morris, S. M. & Stommel, J.
Date: 2018
Publication: Hybrid Pedagogy
Citation: Morris, S. M., & Stommel, J. (2018). An Urgency of Teachers: the Work of Critical Digital Pedagogy. Hybrid Pedagogy. https://urgencyofteachers.com/.
Section on webpage: General Teaching and Course Development
Tenets: Humanizing online teaching/learning. Creating cultures of care in online classrooms.
Annotation: Too many approaches to teaching with technology are instrumental at best, devoid of heart and soul at worst. The role of the teacher is made impersonal and mechanistic by a desire for learning to be efficient and standardized. Solutionist approaches like the learning management system, the rubric, quality assurance, all but remove the will of the teacher to be compassionate, curious, and to be a learner alongside their students.As the authors write in their introduction: “It is urgent that we have teachers. In a political climate increasingly defined by obstinacy, lack of criticality, and deflection of fact and care; in a society still divided across lines of race, nationality, religion, gender, sexuality, income, ability, and privilege; in a digital culture shaped by algorithms that neither know nor accurately portray truth, teaching has an important (urgent) role to play.”This collection of essays explores the authors’ work in, inquiry into, and critique of online learning, educational technology, and the trends, techniques, hopes, fears, and possibilities of digital pedagogy. The ideas of this volume span almost two decades of pedagogical thinking, practice, outreach, community development, and activism.