Why Don’t You Just Tell Me What Grade You Want?

Want an “A”? Okay. Shake on it.

In “contract grading,” the student and instructor agree at the outset what grade the student is going for, and what is needed to earn that grade. Of course, this could describe the point of many syllabi. What distinguishes “contract grading” (at least the examples I have seen) is that the student decides which assignments she will do and which assignments she won’t do. Also, in most examples I have seen, the work is assessed on a “satisfactory/unsatisfactory” basis. I have been looking closely at “contract grading,” and am planning to implement some version of it for my 2014–15 courses.

Cathy Davidson incorporates peer review with a contract grading system, and describes her approach in this Hāstac blog post. Essentially, a student contracting for an “A” has seven distinct obligations. A student contracting for a “B” agrees to a defined subset of those obligations (e.g., in this case, “#1, 2, 3, 4, and 7”), and so on. Dave Cormier describes his own attraction to a contract-grading system, along with his reflections on possible challenges. The blogger syntaxfactory organizes the student’s options according to something like Bloom’s taxonomy of learning, such that the “B” level assignment (not chosen by the “C” contractors) is at a higher-level of “synthetic and collaborative skills,” and the “A” level assignment (not chosen by the “C” or “B” contractors) demonstrates a higher level of “reflective learning skills”.

My attraction to “contract grading” is grounded in my ongoing search for Something To Solve Problems That Never Seem To Go Away.

For example, I have a running unhappiness with late work policies. Regardless of my obstinate disbelief, experience demonstrates that a lot of mature, otherwise-responsible learners will fail to turn in 100% of the course requirements on time (or at all). This is probably exacerbated by the fact that I prefer to have a lot of short projects with due dates spread throughout the term (since I am a big believer in providing early feedback, and in “spreading a student’s risk” over a series of short assignments instead of one big whopper due at term’s end). If this mature, typically-responsible student can eyeball my syllabus and opt out of some assignments (maybe planning around commitments in other classes or at work or at home), and is willing to accept, eyes-open, the consequences for her grade, then I’ve got no problem with that at all.

Another running problem that I’d like to think “contract grading” can address is the Incredible Growing Rubric (closely related to the Incredible Growing Syllabus). Periodically I’ll chop my grading rubrics (like my syllabus) down to a reasonable level of brevity and simplicity…and then watch them grow over the ensuing semesters, in layer after defensive layer, as I try to account for loophole after loophole. Every post-term round of “grade grubbing” results in me adding levels to a once-simple grading rubric.

The beauty of a “satisfactory/unsatisfactory” approach is that you only really need two rows in the rubric. But I share Dave Cormier’s concern that high-performing students might worry that their above-and-beyond efforts go unrecognized. I’d like to try my usual three-row rubric and use the headers “Exemplary, Satisfactory, Unsatisfactory.” Both of the first two rows describe acceptable work, but where a student accomplishes “exemplary” achievements, she receives that feedback. Here (PDF) is my current draft of a single rubric to use in each assignment for a given class: One Rubric to Rule Them All. I’m not sure about it yet: it’s an idea.

With Cathy Davidson, I wonder whether any students will contract for less than an “A.” At my institution, we tend to have a lot of students whose financial aid depends upon maintaining a GPA of “B.” My courses have a reputation for being demanding but not mysterious: you have to do a lot and do it “to spec” (follow instructions), but I’m not holding an invisible number behind my back. Some students might contract for a “B” in my courses with an idea, “Well, that’ll keep my financial aid coming, and the assignments I decline in this class will give me more time for those courses in which the grading process is a little more opaque.”

I would love to hear from anybody with experience in a “contract grading” set-up, whether as instructor or student. Or, if you share my frustration with Late Work policies and the Incredible Growing Rubric, do you think contract grading might help?

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