Originally posted Here This is Part 1 of a three-part series about Flipped Learning’s impact on grading. Part 1 My first years flipping my classroom were focused on making videos and finding great videos that my students could watch in the individual space. My attention then shifted to the group space, moving it from passive to active. Now that my class is functioning smoothly, I feel like I have moved into the next phase of flipped learning…assessment. When addressing assessment, I am not thinking about how to assess, rather I am thinking about the results of the assessments. That’s right; I am talking about grading. If flipped learning is the meta-strategy that allows our current instructional methods to be more effective, and our class time to be more supportive, then shouldn’t our grading be taken to the next level as well? Grades are meant to reflect how well a student understands the content standards, not how successful a student was on assignments. The problem arises when a student doesn’t do the assignment at all. Should that student get a zero for not doing the assignment if the grade is meant to reflect how well the student knows the content? There is also the pitfall of the completion grade. Because a student completed the assignment, he/she receives a complete mastery grade of 100%. In both cases, we are grading a behavior and not the learning. A grade is a measurement of the learning that has occurred. When we grade an assignment, what are we looking for? Are we looking for how many answers the student got right, or are we looking to measure the learning that has occurred? A student who gets 50% of an assignment correct fails the assignment. If we look at the learning that has occurred, has that students demonstrated mastery of some of the content? With traditional grading, there is a finality to the grade, especially on summative assessments. How often have teachers graded an essay by going over it with a fine-toothed comb, making corrections to grammar, adding comments about the wording of sentences or paragraphs, only to have a student look at the grade and ignore the edits? The grade is a finalizing statement about how well the student did on the assignment. My question is this: Does the grade reflect the learning that has occurred?
Kids are by far more complicated than what an A, B, C, D or F can communicate. The student that maintains a B or C average may be one of the hardest working kids in the class and has developed a sense of ownership in the learning process. Flipped learning gives us the time to get to know the complexities of our students because we are working with them in an active learning environment. If a traditional grading system isn’t the best measurement of student learning, where do we go from here? I recommend a look into Standards Based Grading (SBG). In my next post, I will discuss why I think SBG is a perfect fit with Flipped Learning. What are your thoughts on the impact Flipped Learning has on grading?
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Mr. Dan JonesMaster Flip Educator with 13 years experience in the classroom. FLGI Faculty Trainer who trains based on the Gold Standard of Flipped Learning 3.0. Expertise in project based learning. Archives
October 2018
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