Co-creating Authentic Learning Goals with Students as a Scaffold toward Ungrading

Michael Mandiberg, College of Staten Island and the Graduate Center, CUNY

An assignment and lesson plan for collaborative brainstorming exercises enabling students to collectively articulate their own goals. Framing instruction and assessment with their own goals centers students and can also make it easier to deemphasize grades.

Over the last year I have centered my courses around authentic learning goals co-created with my students. Using these goals, I have been able to deemphasize grading by aligning the self-assessments with these goals the students created for themselves. I have used this approach in my advanced undergraduate digital media classes at the College of Staten Island, CUNY, and my graduate course at the CUNY Graduate Center.

This assignment asks students to collectively co-create authentic learning goals. This is an in-class, instructor facilitated process. The assignment itself is embedded in the email I sent to students a week before the start of the class, and is intertwined with an explanation of the course’s approach to deemphasizing grading. I have learned the hard way that when I deviate from students’ expectations, I need to carefully explain what I am asking them to do and why I am asking them to do it. I’m trying to build trust, which is hard over email, but essential to this process. I offer this email for you to reuse as you see fit, adapting and customizing it to your course, voice, and scope.

I have included a lesson plan that describes how to facilitate the low-stakes brainstorming exercises where students write terms, concepts, and questions on post-it notes, and then group these notes into thematic clusters to form their goals. At the College of Staten Island I dedicated the first four-hour class to the extended goals and syllabus co-creation process, but at the Graduate Center we were able to do a slightly rushed set of strengths/weaknesses and goals in about 40 minutes.

In my Digital Imaging II course at the College of Staten Island, the students’ goals were:

• Skill Up: We want to improve our Photoshop skills.
• Take Creative Risks: We want to take risks and develop our creativity.
• Get organized: We want to be better organized and consistent with our work.
• Make good work: We want to create work we can be proud of.
• Get real: We want to be able to apply skills and knowledge outside class in “the real world.”

These mirrored the official learning goals:

• Students will develop advanced digital imaging and compositing skills.
• Students will gain intermediate- to advanced-level aesthetic and compositional skills for digital imaging.
• All student projects will be suitable for inclusion in a student portfolio.

But they diverged in several important ways.

The co-created goals are crafted in a way that has authentic meaning to the students themselves: “We want to create work we can be proud of” more or less means the same thing as, and yet means so much more than “All student projects will be suitable for inclusion in a student portfolio.” It isn’t just that the official goal is written in the inhumane bureaucratic language of outcomes assessment: the students reframe the entire question in terms of pride, with students—not the professor—emotionally and grammatically at the center of determining what is suitable for a portfolio.

They surfaced new goals we had not thought of: “taking creative risks” and “getting organized” ended up being the goals that students most frequently referenced.

The students felt accountable to these goals because they made them. I wrote a summary version of the goals on the board every class session (the two or three words in bold at the start of each line in the list above) and framed every discussion or demo around them. I called out moments when students achieved these goals. We structured our critiques around them. And I asked the students to evaluate themselves in terms of these learning goals.

With learning at the very center of the course, it became surprisingly easy to shake off the traditional focus on grading and summative assessment. I was able refocus the course on the students taking control of their learning. And the students—especially the ones that struggled—shed the adversarial relationship with me that is often just under the surface. With that removed, I felt more like a guide by the side than in any previous class I have taught.

Like the studies I include at the end of my letter (Appendix A) indicate, deemphasizing grades resulted in more learning, less conflict, greater creativity, more honesty about their time/effort, more responsibility for their shortcomings, and more pride in their successes. In terms of course outcomes, the work for the final project demonstrated all the learning goals. Specifically: all students achieved competency, with a higher number excelling than usual.

The final self-assessment asked for reflections on the class structure, and several students said something to the effect of “this was the best class I have taken.” It was one of the best classes I have taught.

Appendixes

Appendix A - Email Sent to Students a Week Before Class with Embedded Assignment

Hello COM 351 students,

I’m reaching out in advance of our first meeting to share a little info about the class, and give you a prompt to think about in advance of our first class next week. In particular, I want you to know that this class will be structured in ways that are probably different from your other classes. While this will probably take many forms, I want to discuss the two most significant.

• We will be co-creating the syllabus together, including the learning goals.
• This class will de-emphasize grades and emphasize self-assessment.

Syllabus Co-Creation

Some professors describe their syllabus as a kind of “contract” that defines the course topics, requirements, activities, and their assessments that all parties agree to abide by. By collaboratively designing the syllabus, this consent becomes less one sided, with students signing on the dotted line of a one-sided mandate, and more of an agreement we enter into together.

During the first day of class, we will work together to determine what topics and techniques you want to learn. We will decide on the historical/theoretical texts that we will read and discuss. And we will agree on the number and nature of assignments that you will complete. We will revisit this work during the semester. During the semester I would also like us to read and discuss a text by Paulo Freire that describes the kinds of learning that these approaches can produce.

If it is helpful, we can start from the COM 351 syllabus when I last taught the course, which I would request you review before we meet for the first time: https://www.351.00mm.org/. This older syllabus already has some degree of co-creation, as the second half of the course was constructed based on the students’ interests and motivations.

De-emphasizing Grades

The one decision that I have made in advance of our work creating the syllabus is that we will use methods of evaluation that de-emphasize grades. Several decades of research has shown again and again that grades are counterproductive to learning. They demotivate students, destroy intrinsic motivation, impede creativity, and lead to lower quality work. I would also like us to read a short text by Alfie Kohn that explains why grading doesn't work and describes alternative forms of evaluation.

We are going to use three key forms of evaluation: specifications grading, written & verbal evaluation, and self-assessment. In some ways, specifications grading is a fancy way of saying Pass/Fail, but it asks us to focus on the specifications of the assignment: does the work you have created meet the specifications of the assignment? Did you engage with the thematic prompt? Did you demonstrate that you learned the technique? Did you explore your creativity? If you did meet these specifications, then the assignment is Satisfactory. If you didn’t meet these specifications, then the assignment Needs Revision. If your assignment Needs Revision, I invite you to revise it. During our critiques for these smaller assignments, and in feedback for the larger projects, I will give you verbal or written feedback that describes the ways in which the project is successful, and what you could do to improve it. Research shows that this kind of detailed verbal or written feedback is the most productive form of evaluation. An “A–” doesn’t tell you anything about how you can get an “A,” but narrative feedback does tell you how to make your work better. And it helps you build towards your own self-evaluation. I will ask you to evaluate your learning and your assignments three times during the semester: two points in the middle of the term, and once at the end. At the end I will ask you to propose a grade that reflects your learning, as I do have to enter a grade into CUNYfirst, whether I like it or not. I will reserve the right to change your grade if I feel it is too high, or too low.

I want to be clear that I’m not taking these approaches because I don’t know what to teach you; because I don’t want to put in the work preparing; or because I don’t want to do the work or take the responsibility for grading. Quite the opposite: I know a lot about digital imaging, and could teach three or four different courses on its different aspects. And I promise you that this approach entails substantially more work for me. I’m making these changes because I want to empower you and give you skills and strategies for lifelong learning. These modifications are more like the way that learning, and assessment take place in real life. And they are the most likely to catalyze you to want to learn for learning’s sake, not because of some essentially meaningless number or letter.

I have thought deeply about pedagogy and have written about the scholarship of teaching and learning. At the Graduate Center’s Interactive Technology and Pedagogy certificate program, I teach courses to PhD students about teaching with and about technology. I have used these two approaches with my students at the Graduate Center, and have included some aspects of this approach in my CSI courses, but I want to be transparent that this will be the first time I will be co-creating the entire syllabus, and it will be the first time that I will be using self-assessment to determine the grade entered into CUNYfirst. As such I expect to assess this process in real time and make adjustments and revisions as we go.

I am asking you to think about what you want to learn. What interests you about digital imaging. What you liked best about your COM 251 course. What aspects of COM 251/Photoshop you don’t remember very well and might like to revisit. We will begin our first class with some brainstorming about this.

Yours,

Michael

Further Reading on Syllabus Co-creation:

I don’t expect you to read these, but I’m putting them here in case you are interested.

Further Reading on Grading and Ungrading:

I don’t expect you to read these, but I’m putting them here in case you are interested.

Appendix B - Lesson Plan: Co-creating Authentic Learning Goals

60–90 minutes

In my undergraduate and graduate courses I facilitate a collaborative brainstorming technique for students to define their own learning goals. This process follows the Book Sprint methodology, using post-it notes to record ideas and concepts, which the group then arranges into related themes and topics.

I do this work in tandem with de-emphasizing grades, so I preface this exercise by discussing grades. I explain that the research shows that grades impede learning and creativity. I lead students in a discussion where they talked about their experiences with grades, and how they feel about them (mostly negative). I tell them I don’t care about their grade, I only care about whether they were learning, and that the two were not the same thing. That serves as the lead-in to the exercise.

I begin with the students sitting around the large table at the back of our computer lab—I like the communal aspect of it, but you could do this sitting at desks too. I hand out enough post-it note pads (split in half) so that each student has a half-pad, and there are plenty of extras around the table; you want there to be an excess, so they feel like there isn’t any limit on how much they can write. I started out by asking them to write down what they remembered from their previous Digital Imaging I class, and what they thought they needed to refresh on. These were their strengths and their weaknesses. I asked them to write down one term, tool, technique, or idea per note, and write “I Know” or “Refresh Needed” at the top. I instructed them not write their names on any of them. I told them we would take 10 minutes to write, and they should not feel rushed. Often their impulse is to edit themselves, and only write two or three notes, but I tried to encourage them to write 10 to 15. After about 7 to 8 minutes the energy will waver a bit, though a few students will still be going strong writing post-its. Tell those students to keep writing and go to the board with the other students and ask them to start putting post it notes up on the board. I collected the notes at the table, and then intentionally gave each student a random set, so they were now channeling other people’s ideas, though this isn’t necessary. The remaining students will finish writing by the time all the notes are on the board.

Once all the post-its are on the board, ask the students to start grouping them. I started the process, showing them the idea by talking out loud as I grouped some: “I see Layers here, and Non-destructive Editing, and over there is Layers, and also Organizing Layers. I’m going to put those in a group here.” After talking through a couple more of the obvious groupings, I intentionally found a more ambiguous one and asked them a question: “I have three notes for Blend Modes, and one that says Layer Interactions, do you think these should go with the Layers, or are they their own topic?” I got them to discuss it and come to a decision, and by then they were moving the notes around and I got out of the way so they could do the bulk of the grouping.

After another 5–7 minutes, most of the notes were in clusters. I stepped back in to merge a few, move one or two exemplary notes to the top of the list, around which I drew a border and labeled the list with names like “Layers” or “Blend Modes,” etc. I asked them if these labels reflected the meaning they saw in the clusters. Mostly they agreed, but in some instances they clarified and we changed the title. At that point, I asked them to write everything down on the Google Doc syllabus, prompting them to realize that any of them could edit our syllabus. I also took photographs for future reference, then we took all the notes down and started the second round.

We returned to the table and I asked them to write down what they wanted to learn, and what they thought they needed in order to achieve that. I asked them what questions they had. And I asked them not to censor themselves. I reminded them that these did not have their names on them, so they should not be afraid to ask any questions.

We went back to the board and again started arranging the post-its into groups. The students became more comfortable with the process this second round, though this phase is a bit more challenging because it requires more synthesis to extrapolate from cards like “avoid falling into bad habits,” “better organize folders,” and “NOT PROCRASTINATE,” to synthesize into “We want to be better organized and consistent with our work.” I took more of a dialogic role in this process, talking the ideas through out loud: “I’m seeing these notes about folder and layer organization relating to those about time management. It seems like it is about organization and consistency? And it seems like the ‘stay focused’ group to the left fits in here too. Does that reflect your intentions?” After 5–7 minutes we had organized five groups. For each of them I summarized them into a 2-or-3–word catchy summary, and proposed a sentence that began with “We want to” and asked them if that was what they meant. Once we had agreed on these sentences, we added them to the syllabus. There were a handful of notes that didn’t fit in any category, and I held on to those notes and found moments during the semester to address most of them.

One of the particularly powerful effects of this process is that the students see their shared interests, goals, challenges, and uncertainties coalesce in a kind of symbolic solidarity: It is easier to say out loud that you want to make work you are proud of when you realize that your peers do too. It makes it feel more OK to ask for help about how Blend Modes work when you see that a third of your classmates also need a refresher. And it is reassuring to know that many of your classmates are also anxious about professional practices.

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