The Problem with Grades

In a wide-ranging discussion about grades and grading, Dr. Joshua Eyler discusses how grades are harming our learners and what we can do to help minimize that harm. We talk about the history of grades and how the current interval letter grade system came to prominence, the stress that grades cause students and the way that stress is exacerbating the mental health crisis. And we discuss alternative grading models under the umbrella of ungrading–along with clarifying what that term really means. 

Key Takeaways:

• Our current interval letter grade system wasn’t developed because it was the best way to document student learning or engagement, it came into being because of the need for administrative efficiency. Given our role in the development of the transcript, registrars should take a lead role in helping think through What Comes Next after grades. 
• Grades are excellent extrinsic motivators. Unfortunately extrinsic motivation is only good if the goal is compliance. If we want our students to engage in their learning, we need to shift the focus to intrinsic motivation by employing alternative assessment methods or “collaborative grading” models. 
• We are in the midst of a significant period of grade reform. Registrars should leverage this opportunity to participate in and lead conversations at our institutions about alternative forms of assessment.  

Host:

Doug McKenna, University Registrar
George Mason University
cmckenn@gmu.edu 

Guests:

Josh Eyler, Director of Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning
Clinical Assistant Professor of Teacher Education
University of Mississippi
jreyler@olemiss.edu
Website

References and Additional Information:

AACRAO Core Competencies - Leadership & Management

AACRAO Professional Proficiencies - Records and Academic Services

Failing Our Future: How Grades Harm Students, and What We Can Do About It by Josh Eyler

How Humans Learn: The Science and Stories behind Effective College Teaching by Josh Eyler

Unleash Student Creativity with Contract Grading, a scholarly digital story by Doug McKenna

“Making Grades” - a digital learning activity for HE721 History of Higher Education by Doug McKenna

Transcript

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You're listening to for the record, a registrar podcast sponsored by Acro. I'm Josh Eiler, Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning and Clinical assistant professor of teacher education at the University of Mississippi. And this is the problem with grades. Hello and welcome to for the record. I'm your host, Doug mckenna University Registrar at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. Today, we're gonna be talking about a topic that is near and dear to my heart, the problem with grades and grading. And I'm very excited to welcome our guest today, Dr Joshua Eiler. So there's so much to talk about and we're just going to jump right in. So, Josh, welcome to the podcast. Thank you, Doug. Glad to be here. It's wonderful to have you. And like I said, I'm, I'm really excited about this topic. So, before we dive in, would you tell us a little bit about yourself? Sort of what your career has looked like so far? And then what brought you, you're at Old Miss currently, correct? Yeah. So what brought you to Old Miss? Yeah. So I began my career as a faculty member at Columbus State University. In Georgia, which is mid size comprehensive uh very diverse institution with an open access mission in Georgia. Um and love the teaching that I did there. And it was so clear how much impact the work that my colleagues uh were doing with students and helping those students to build their lives. And uh that was really meaningful for me. And I really wanted to think about how I could contribute to teaching initiatives on a broader, a broader scale and be part of a larger conversation about teaching and learning in higher education. So I made the decision after I got tenure to move to the world of teaching and learning centers. And I, I actually moved to George Mason. Uh that was my first position in the teaching center. I worked with the great Kim Eb who uh associate provost. She was both associate provost and director back then. And I was the associate director and learned so much from her. She was, she was amazing. She was phenomenal. Yeah. Uh spent two years there and then Rice University was starting a brand new teaching center and I moved there to be the founding director and spent six years working with a great staff and a great group of faculty to build that from the ground up and really advocate for the teaching mission at a research institution. It was, it was a lot of fun. 2019, a position came open here at the University of Mississippi to help rebuild the teaching center as a director and also to direct our five year quality enhancement plan, which is on critical thinking in gen ed courses. So I do both at the same time. Plus, there was a little bit of a pandemic sprinkled in there. So we were very busy with that. So it's, it's been a fascinating ride and I've, I really love seeing all the changes that have happened in teaching and learning over my time doing this work. And among those many changes, there's been a lot of movement in the conversation about grading as an audience. This is a podcast largely focused for registrars or registrar adjacent people. And so maybe say a couple of more words about what a teaching center does. What, what is the work that you do as part of a teaching and learning center? Absolutely. And then I have a shout out for registrars. Yes. So uh a teaching center, our mission is to support enhance the teaching that happens at a, at a university. So we work with faculty to implement evidence based teaching practices in their classrooms. We advocate for a better incentive structure at the university to support teaching innovation. We do a lot of work with graduate students both in their role as tas but also looking ahead for those who want to be future faculty and many teaching centers now even and, and ours is no exception even support undergrads who do things like uh tutoring and our learning assistants and, and uh at rice, they even taught some courses so a whole range. But everything is connected to the latest research on teaching and how to help our students learn better through implementing more of teaching practice. That's awesome. And the shout out to the registrars is that I wanted to say for, for this podcast, registrars have been among the biggest allies for the grading reform work that we are about to talk about. Uh There have been any number of instances that I can think of off the top of my head when the question has come from a dean or a chair or a provost about whether or not it is possible possible for people to change the way they grade and use these alternative grading practices. And the registrars I've worked with have always swooped in and said, what we care about is that there are grades on the transcript and we trust faculty in their professional expertise to determine those grades. And so I can't thank you and your community enough for the support that you give to these initiatives. Fantastic. I love to hear that. Let's talk a little bit about how you got started into the, the research of grades and grading and you mentioned it a little bit as part of your work in the teaching and learning space and having some of these conversations come up. Um But really what sparked your interest in researching grades and grading. Sure, a couple of years ago, I uh put out a book called How Humans Learn. And when I was working on that book, which is about the science of learning, I was writing a chapter on failure and how failure can be a tool for better, better learning, um better teaching. And I was, I kept coming across research about grades and how they set up obstacles to that natural learning process. So that was really intriguing to me. Uh It was sort of a tangent for the chapter, but I kind of filed it away as something that I wanted to think more about. And at the same time, there started to grow this movement and this conversation amongst so many educators about changing the way they were grading the classroom. And I know we'll talk about some of those different models in a few minutes, but so many people were thinking about it and doing it. And I was, I was experimenting with it myself that I was really drawn then to the idea of writing a book that would give a kind of bird's eye view of the landscape when it came to thinking about the problems of grades. So not just in the classroom, but how grades affect people outside of the classroom as well. And then what we can do from our own positions to really help solve those problems. Fantastic. And that book, the most recent book is failing our future, how grades harm students and what we can do about it. And it's set to be released. August 27th. But if you pre ordered it as I did, it arrived yesterday. So, yeah, it's beautiful. I, I am holding it now so I've only read about a third of it. I got it yesterday afternoon. I walked the dogs in the evening and I sat down with it. It's very good. I want to congratulate you on the book. Um I've enjoyed the parts that I've read so far. And then I also want to give you an opportunity to talk some about it. And so let's start a little bit with the history of grades. And you mentioned in the book specifically Ezra Stiles, President of Yale and Horace Mann Educational Reformer. And so tell us about the contribution those two individuals specifically made, right? Yeah, they're interesting fellows and uh in some ways, their contribution discussion about grades really shapes what shapes that history. So Esther Sts was the president of Yale University in the late 17 hundreds and he gets the credit or the blame depending on your perspective for bringing our first system of grading to America. He didn't invent it. He borrowed it from British Universities, a system that was very popular at the time and this system was, it looks uh in some ways, nothing at all like what we use today. And then other is exactly the same as what we used today. And he was, he back then, the university education meant essentially that you were subjected to at the end of that, at the end of the term, a major oral exam that covered everything that you had learned from rhetoric to Greek to Latin, uh all of it. And he examined these students and divided them based on their performance into four categories that had Latin labels. But the translations were best, second best, the lower of the good group and worse, not worse, which I think is interesting but worse. So I pulled back a little bit at the end. But so the students were divided into those 44 categories. They were sorted and ranked based on their performance. And we don't have that kind of system anymore, but grades very much still are used for sorting and ranking. And you could argue that things like Latin honors and uh GPA S and class rank are legacies of the original intention for, for grades. So he, he starts the ball rolling in America and education in America at that time was the special university education was for wealthy white men. And the public educational system was very disparate depending on where you were as a young person. You could have a real well developed uh kind of school system or you could have uh you know, Nathan Hale in Connecticut was a school teacher. He had a little wooden house and a couple of kids from rural Connecticut who would be there. So it really depended on where you were Horace Mann who lived in the middle of the 19th century, changed a lot of that. He had a fascinating life including taking over John Quincy adams' seat in the House of Representatives. But he's best known for his education reform. He was Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education. And as part of that, he implemented changes to that system that really came to define our school systems in America, that much of what we know about school and education is due to Horace Mann. So school districts taxpayer funded schools, school libraries, professional development for teachers, standardized testing. All of it comes from Horace Mann, but the connection to grades is one that I find fascinating. So he was interested in two separate things that together begin to shape our modern conversation about grades. One is that he did not think that it was uh beneficial for students to compete against each other in the oral exam structure that had been in place for so long. He thought it was much more beneficial for learning that students undergo what he called self emulation, meaning they weren't trying to beat their classmate, they were trying to improve themselves each performance. So he really tried to place a, a lot of emphasis in his writing and he wrote these massive reports every year uh on, on the focus of the classroom being on the student individually and their own individual performance. So you combine that with his obsession with record keeping. He uh he developed this uh this um this form with all these different things that teachers had to note about students. It was attendance and comportment and behavior and all sorts of things. And so eventually that interest in record keeping along with uh this newer interest in individual progress, he joined with others who were interested in those things to lead to eventually what we know now is report cards and reporting progress in the class, to students and to parents. And that, that shift to the individual I think is an important moment for the conversation about grades, letter grades themselves are relatively new to the conversation. First letter grades happened in the 18 nineties and, uh, they're not standardized and this is what I think is really interesting. They're not standardized until the 19 forties. So that's less than 100 years. And the only reason they were standing, meaning schools across the country adopted the A through F system was, it wasn't because they thought this is the best way to demonstrate that students are learning. It was so that they could talk across institutions that they could be compared to each other and also to set students up with a common, a common language, a common transcript, one that would look familiar to all of the colleges that they would apply to. Yeah. And actually registrars have a big part in that Acro was founded in 1910 and one of the early gatherings, annual meetings now of registrars, there was sort of a task force put together to talk amongst higher education institutions about how to present the information from one school to the other school and the development of the transcript. So interesting. Yeah, I had Ethan Hutt who you might know at least by name on as one of the very first guests about talking about the history of the academic record. And I know that he and Jack Jack Schneider. Yeah. Um also have this history of the A through F grade scheme. And so one thing that I also like to point out to everybody about the A through F interval letter grade scheme is that it might be common across institutions, but it's just a framework. And so there's a significant amount of variation between institutions where some use pluses, some use minuses, some don't use either the quality points that people associate with different things. So it is a common language and a common framework, but it is definitely not like a full on standard. Everybody's using the same system kind of a thing. Absolutely right. Yet there's a AAA perception that it is the same, right and, and with some scientific certainty like an A and A and A but that's as we know. So let's dive in what does research tell us about students responses to grades well, a lot and none of it's really all that good. Um, so you have the responses in the classroom and great. The, the research on grades and their role in the classroom is probably our biggest, our biggest bucket of research that we have and the ways that grades affect motivation and, and the ways that, that it affects learning overall. But if we're talking about student responses, the research about motivation is probably the most important. And I don't think that there's anyone in higher ed who would argue that grades are not extrinsic motivators, they are, they're classic extrinsic motivators like prizes and rewards and, and candy. They can be both the carrot and the stick in a way. But both of those are external to the individual. Absolutely. And you know, extrinsic motivators derived directly from behaviorism, they are about shaping behavior. And so we know that they uh the research shows that extrinsic motivators work, but they work only if your goal is compliance. So if you want to make someone do something that they would in other, in any other context, not do extrinsic motivators work. So they work to get students in seats, they work to get students to turn things in on time uh to participate in class. But an extrinsic motivator will never guarantee that just because the student is in the learning environment that they will actually learn that takes intrinsic motivation. Learning depends on intrinsic motivation. So a student response to grades as they now stand are largely I have to do this because it is required of me because my future requires it. Uh, I need to get into a good college, get a good job, get into good grad school, et cetera. Not because I care at all about the learning that happens or the subject matter, it's about the grade and you know, that to me runs completely counter to what our hopes are for education. Uh that, that we, we want students to find their passion to be really interested in what we're teaching. But the grading system is, is not set up for that if we look outside the classroom though. And this is where the bulk of the first half of my book is really focused on what happens outside after the grade is given and it really does affect people uh their lives, they see themselves. So we have research showing how grades magnify inequities for students inequities that have always been a part of our educational institutions. We have new studies showing more and more how grades and academic stress tied to grades are contributing to the mental health crisis in teenagers and young adults. And that was only, I just saw a paper today that um of course COVID exacerbated that anxiety but anxiety specifically related to academics has not gone down after COVID. Uh And so there's a lot there connected to grades that is uh that is really harming our, our students and their mental health. And so that to me is, is really important, right on you talk about the complexity of the issue of grades and grading and that talking about grading is much more than just addressing a letter or a number or a mark or a symbol. So, could you share what you mean by the concept of a grading model? What are they, what do they mean? What do you include in your concept of a grading model? That's a really great question. Um I'm glad you asked. Not a lot of people do ask about that one. So yes, you're absolutely right. Grading is more than I'm just putting a letter on an exam or uh on the paper. Grading entails my approach to feedback as a teacher. What kinds of feedback do I give? How do I communicate the learning that is happening? Uh while I'm giving the grade, it's tied to my philosophy as an educator. It's tied to my beliefs about students and learning. Uh and it's tied to the overall course design and, and structure and how evaluation plays into that. So all of that wrapped together is what I call a grading model. The dominant grading models in higher education today are traditional grading models. And what that means is often one assignment gets a grade and those grades are then averaged together at the end of the semester uh into another grade that there is often very little room for correcting errors or revising along the way. And often, but not always often, uh a limited amount of feedback that attends the grade that goes along with the grade on the assignment. The newer models, the alternative grading models that seek to put more of the spotlight on learning, uh often share a number of qualities. One is lots of feedback, lots of student self assessment, multiple means and multiple opportunities for demonstrating learning. So there's not just uh you have this exam and that's your shot. And if you blow your shot, you have to just move on, right? So multiple ways and, and opportunities for showing that that's the M and M model of education, you only get one shot. Yes. And you know, I'm going to digress further because with the Eminem model, that song is you only get one shot. Do not miss your chance to blow. But that song then should be like 25 seconds long, but it's 3.5 minutes because the, the message of the song is if you keep persisting and trying and you'll just keep working and getting better and you, you'll have another shot that you can then take. So that I don't know if that's ironic that Eminem says you only get one shot, but then he talks about multiple shots throughout the song or what?-- That's a total digression.-- I love. It is great. That, that's great. I'm sorry, I derailed your-- not at-- all on the Yeah. So my doctoral research is focused on student perceptions of un grading pedagogies. And you've started to hint there and having read part of your book last night, maybe I should not call them un grading pedagogies, but collaborative grading approaches. Um And so I'm interested in understanding unpacking how those classroom practices affect a student's intrinsic motivation. And so first, how would you define un grading? And then I guess more to the point, how would you differentiate that from what you describe as collaborative grading? And then what can you tell us about grades as motivators? You talked about how like extrinsically they do things, but what is a shift to intrinsic motivation look like? And what does that lead to? So un grading is a a really exciting and important term. There's no denying the importance of that term for rhetorically driving part of the conversation about grading reform over the last 10 years. Like so many of uh of our academic terms, active learning is one that's very similar uh meant a specific thing. And now it means a lot of things un grading is very, is, has had a similar trajectory. So I have found that when people use that term, they mean one of three things, they, they mean a specific model of, of grading which we'll talk about in a second, they mean the philosophy of getting rid of grades altogether or they mean the collection of alternative grading models. And so I use alternative grading models rather than un grading uh simply to differentiate. And I like un grading as a term for the philosophy. I think we should keep it. And I, I think it's useful in that way, the specific model that uh uh that has been labeled un grading in the past I used in my own courses. It is uh it is by far one of the more progressive grading grading schemes, some would call it maybe a little um extreme. But uh so the way on that model works is there are no grades given throughout the semester. Students get a lot of feedback and they do a lot of self assessment along the way at the end of the semester, using a ton of evidence from their, their coursework, they propose a final grade and then they meet with the instructor in a conference to kind of negotiate that grade based on the proposal. And that's the grade that they and goes uh goes in the grade book. Now, does everyone just say well, hey, I got an a no, no, surprisingly because you've built up so much trust and they've done so much reflection and evaluating over the term if it's working correctly. In fact, there, the worry that I have heard is that people will give themselves a but the reality that I have seen and others who tried this is the more common problem is not that people are grading themselves too high. In fact, I've only had two cases of that the whole time. It's that good students are grading themselves too low. Uh, and especially women and minoritized students who receive lots of messages about, about grades and their performance. So then what you do in that conference, it becomes a way of, uh, it becomes a means of talking to them about their, about the strength of the, their performance. Why they need to uh how they can recognize those strengths in future courses and to elevate the grade that they have proposed to actually match the work that they have done in the course. So it's really fascinating. So that's been, that's the one that's been called un grading for a long time. There's a movement now uh to call it collaborative grading simply because of this linguistic interference with UN grading and collaboration is really at the heart of what is happening in this grading model. So uh that, that's a, that's a new movement. But so that's uh that's what we talk about when we talk about un grading, I think um if we're, if we're then moving kind of the camera lens is zooming out a little bit to these alternative grading practices and how they help to enhance motivation for students. Some of it has to do with what we talked about before in that you are allowing students more time to learn at their own pace. So learning is a deeply complex process. Students learn concepts in different ways at different times and traditional grading processes kind of penalize students who would have otherwise learned the concept very effectively by the end of the semester for not learning it at a particular point in the semester. And so try to open up space and that's motivating for students that they, that they are going to have the best chance for success for themselves. So that's one way to do it, you know, something like standards based grading or specifications, grading, the grade is not based on how well you do in an exam. It's based on how many of the standards you have met over the course of the semester, for example, right. So giving, giving that space relieving the pressure valve is uh it allows for more intrinsic motivation. You can explore topics that interest you, you can try out a completely wild idea about something and you know, it could go somewhere or, or not, but you're not penalized for it, not going anywhere, right? That's part of the learning process. Another way that they're motivated. I didn't know, I think this is important and something I see with the un grading collaborative grading in particular, there is a lot students are granted a lot of agency in their own learning process in, in many of these models. So, you know, they have a lot of say in reflecting on their work and and how they believe that they contributed to the class over time and what ultimately they have learned. And I think the, the way American educational systems and other educational systems to be frank uh have been set up has really been to put students in a position where they don't feel like they have any control over what happens to them in school and, and what their, what their fates, their academic fates will be. And by allowing room for that, by giving them agency by giving them by collaborating with them on this journey. It is uh it is very motivating for them. So some of the comments I've had just in my own classes, you know, let alone the hundreds and thousands of other people are trying this are, I felt like because I was being treated like an adult that it was on me to live up to that, right? That so it was uh it was really empowering and motivating, I think in, in some of these systems for them. That's awesome. I really appreciate that insight. And it is interesting also the the differentiation between sort of how we're labeling what we're talking about. When we talk about un grading, it is a very, it's a broad umbrella term. And as you pointed out, it's used in a couple of different ways depending on who's talking about it and, and how and so having more precise language I think is, is helpful both to invite people into the conversation. But then also to further the conversation because we can be more specific about this is what's happening in the classroom. This is the overall overarching philosophical approach, et cetera. So I have a couple of more questions and time is flying by. So I appreciate you being here so much. You address the mental health crisis that students are experiencing in the United States, at least in a full chapter of the book. And so you hinted at the kind of stress that grades add to and are playing a role in. What role do you think grades and grading are playing in that crisis? And what are ways that you either talk about parents or as administrators? What are things that we can do to, as you just mentioned, sort of press that relief valve for and, and let out some of the pressure. So grades create this pressure cooker for students, you know, especially in higher ed. Everything's riding on that for them, their career, their uh their grad school, med school, law school, the possible futures that lay beyond the walls of college are all kind of gate kept by the grades that they get. And when they come to college, they've also had 12 years of the kinds of pressures that the grades bring with them. And when you combine that reality with the fact that college students, newly adults are on their own for the first time, many of them who are now protected by things like Ferpa and HP A where they, they don't have the same support structures that they had, that, that many of them had uh when they were in high school, all of that wrapped together means that students, that the grades and the pressures that grades bring with them are elevated for college students. And so what we see in the surveys and reports like the healthy minds, uh survey, our university just got just reported on the data uh for for last year. And so we were looking at that, but what you see is that grades and academic stress are always rated at the very top or near the top of the stressors that are connected to students, self reported, anxiety, depression, et cetera that when they are asked what is happening, grades and academic stress are at the very top of the list. And you know, I'm not going to say that grades are causing it all, but they are definitely a contributing factor because students themselves are telling us that and that's what the research on college students is showing in tandem with that. So what can, what can institutions do? I am actually pretty critical of our higher ed institutions in this chapter. Take more. II I try to be very balanced in a lot of my assessments. But for the most part, when it comes to mental health, colleges and universities are reactive and not proactive that it often takes something serious to happen before there is significant discussion about how the institution can help with the mental health crisis. So when it comes to grades, I think that administrators and faculty at the very least need to sit down and talk about how the academic part of the college experience is contributing to the mental health crisis. What what often happens is that the academic piece of this gets taken as a given that obviously, this is what happens in classrooms. We're not going to touch that we have to just provide support on the outside, on the margins of the academic experience to help bolster the students to get through that. We're, we're bolstering the walls from outside, but we're not putting out the fire that's inside the building. We never look at that and there are all kinds of reasons, of course, why that is true, why we don't look at that? But we need to. And so at the very least if institutions could have that conversation using some of this research, I think that would be a really important step in the right direction. Having folks in the provost office, the registrar's office, uh admissions talk about the uh the possibilities of different ways of grading different kinds of transcripts. I mean, just to be open to thinking about possibilities, I think is really helpful as well. But to change the kind of culture of the of the discussion about academics as well to being a uh to move from. What did you get in this class? How are you doing to, what did you learn? What was exciting? What is interesting? You know, I, I uh what I remember fondly from George Mason was the undergraduate research initiatives that uh that uh we worked on with uh with that office. That it's fascinating because it was, everything was focused on. What cool project are you working on? Not, what grade did you get on it? And that's really a shift that the entire campus needs to work on together to me. So those are the kinds of things I think we need to see right on. Speaking of possibilities. Now, you're on a registrar focus podcast. We're talking about grades. So the idea of getting rid of grades strikes deeply at the core of what registrars do we maintain the student record, we enforce registration restrictions, we calculate and run academic standing based on term and cumulative GPA S. We enforce academic policies on probation suspension dismissal based on GPA S and we award degrees only after confirming that a student has met a minimum GPA standard. And we're responsible for the transcript, not just maintaining our own current students transcripts, but as I mentioned before, literally a group of registrars got together, we're responsible for the design in the transcript in the early 19 hundreds and it hasn't changed much since then. So getting rid of grades as an idea rocks the boat for us a little bit as professionals. So what do you think will take the place of letter grades or GPA S? How will institutions be able to track student participation, performance or completion in the absence of grades? Right. Well, so let's talk about the ideal and then the reality, I think the ideal is that there are grade colleges that exist. Uh The ones that the one that I feature in the book is Evergreen State in White uh who uses in they have no grades whatsoever. They use entirely narrative based transcripts as uh as you well know, uh it's a process where the last week of every term, the faculty are writing these lengthy uh reflections and and reports and meeting with students and then uh an excerpt of that goes in the transcript along with the student's response. And that is, that's a very different type of transcript, it as a different amount of work and lots of different metrics and frameworks for what to do with that. So I think there are models, there are possibilities for where we might go. But we are in a moment right now. I think where we cannot wave a magic wand and all 4000 institutions of higher learning in America suddenly shift to the Green State Hampshire New College Model. So I think what uh you know, the the goal the world that we're in right now, the conversation about grading reform is about reorienting students experience with grades using these new models. And so I think that a great step from my perspective would be if institutions were, were communicating the faculty that not only were they open to experimentation with grading, but that they actually encouraged it and incentivized it in the promotion and tenure process. So that would, that would be a big step forward. I think toward making change on a more systemic level from the registrar's office point of view. I, you know, the, the kinds of experimentation with a select of pass fail courses or the opportunity to cover grades, uh you know, a certain number of, of, of courses for doing that. I think thinking about solutions in that vein from the registrar's office and, and maybe proposing them offering them up to the campus community. There was a period of time when institutions wouldn't show students their grades. And that was because they wanted to minimize the competition between students. And so there are, there have been conversations about what do we do about the transcript? And can we suppress things or can we add information to the, to the transcript to give whoever's receiving it a better sense of like, oh, this student got that's above the average for the class or? So that's a good grade. You know, that's not a, that's not a failing grade and, you know, sort of level setting. And so I, I think that's a really interesting suggestion and approach to, to reinvigorate that conversation from a what do we do about grades uh scenario rather than just like, how do we make the transmission of this data more efficient, you know, institution to institution? I agree. I want to ask one more thing and then we'll, we'll throw this out uh in the structure of scientific revolutions. Thomas Kuhn argues that scientific progress isn't the result of sort of slow accumulation of knowledge. But we operate more in sort of an episodic model where periods of normal science are disrupted by periods of revolutionary science that's then known as a a paradigmatic shift. The paradigm shift, your book joins voices of others who have articulated serious concerns about what grades are doing to our students, to our learners here in the 21st century. So what do you think it will take to spur on this paradigmatic shift in higher education to move us past the A through F interval letter grade scheme? And what does whatever comes next look like to you? That's the-- $24 question.-- Yeah. Are you excited about this one? So um there are, if you look historically, there are three major periods of grading reform in America, one in the 19 tens when people saw the tidal wave beginning to approach. And so uh there are these two guys who are just writing article after article trying to say grades are not objective measurements and you can just hear them shouting into the void. But so that was one, the sixties and seventies, you know, when lots of other kinds of social movements were happening, grading reform was a major, a major player in that. And right now and the difference between now and those two other periods is technology, the uh the role of social media and other ways of communicating, to bring together a community of people who are experimenting in this way. So it's gathered, you know, in those other two times, the snowball has gotten to the top of the hill and melted. But this time, it actually has gotten tipped over the hill. And so you can see it gathering speed and mass uh over the last five years especially. And one of the things that you could not have ever predicted that would have driven, that would have driven this forward so quickly was COVID actually that overnight, seemingly many institutions changed their grading policy at like snap of a finger, right? Some went to all pass, fail some like my own allowed students to cover a failing grade or a grade that they weren't happy with. And then of course, many went back as soon as that semester was over. But that put, that showed people what was possible and really expedited the conversation. The institution didn't burn to the ground.-- It did not-- when we allowed students to select an alternative grade mode for classes that they'd already registered and participating in. And so in a similar way that like the number of faculty who had said prior to COVID, I will never teach online. We had a significant number of faculty who were after said, I don't want to come back. I just want to keep teaching online. And, and so like, these are things that we need to, these are lessons from the pandemic that I think we need to cling to and continue to talk about and remind people as like institutions sort of drift back just out of inertia into uh the normalcy of this terrible system that-- we've been operating under.-- Yeah. So and so what will then because we are where we are now, what will then drive this conversation even further to enact more systemic change. The framing of this book is really uh really comes from my role in the teaching center and getting to interact with so many different uh different people at a university, administrators, faculty and students and staff and observing that what we need next is to have everyone on the same page with what the research is showing from all these different angles. Because often when we are talking about the problems of grades, we're talking about it from our own vantage point faculty, you know what they're teaching tomorrow and policy or the student response to it, that kind of thing. But if we can all, if we're all up to speed on the conversation, all coming at it from the same place. I think we can really make a big strides in terms of systemic change. It will be interesting to see to like who the first institutions will be in a similar way that you know, us news and World Report college rankings had held sway for so many years. And then suddenly a bunch of Ivy League schools were like, yeah, we're not going to give you any information anymore. We're just not not going to participate in that and they can do that because they're Ivy League schools. But that may, that drove a conversation about what are we doing here? Like, what, what is involved here and why are we all jumping through these hoops? Is this really valuable? And so in a similar way, like it may take a handful of institutions to, to be bold and to lead in this area. And then I think that might further the snowball rolling down the hill. Oh, I'm, I'm completely with you that, you know, test optional admissions is a great example and sort of another one that kind of sparked by the pandemic, although it had been happening a little bit before that, but really sped up by the pandemic and, you know, some went back now and some are holding to it. And so it's an interesting moment for that conversation, but it has parallels as you're saying to the grading conversation as well. So yeah, I'm, I'm really optimistic. I think we have. Uh there's a lot of hope for this. We just have to keep pushing forward. Yeah, Josh, this is so fantastic and I want to echo my earlier sentiments for everyone who's listening. Please pick up the book. It is failing our future, how grades harm students and what we can do about it. I put a link to the Amazon page for the book on the show notes page along with Josh's contact information. Thank you so much for taking the time to share some insight and wisdom with us and I look forward to reading the rest of the book. Thanks, Doug, I really enjoyed talking with you. Thanks again to Josh Eiler for taking the time to talk with me about the problem of grades and grading. Pick up a copy of the book or maybe give a copy of the book to your Provost or Center for teaching and learning director as a present grades are 200 miles of bad road. And if we work together, we can minimize the harm that they do and maximize the benefit of our educational system. Everyone listening to this would benefit from that. Let's change the world y'all. Hey, are you registered to vote? Are you sure? When was the last time you verified your voter registration information. Go to vote.gov. Vote.gov. Find your state. Look up your information. If someone you know will be 18 by the general election, November 5th, 2024. Most states will allow them to register to vote. Now, spread the word. Make a plan to vote. Bring a friend, bring all your friends. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please forward it on to other administrators in your institution. Let's continue talking about grades and continue finding ways to improve the system. Until next time, stretch your legs drink some more water, be kind to each other. I'm Doug mckenna and this is for the record.