The Student Experience of Ungrading

Abstract

The term "ungrading" is an umbrella term encompassing educational practices that seek to eliminate or minimize the use of the A-F standard grading scale. The term grew in popularity during the Spring 2020 semester, as the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic required educational institutions to urgently and rapidly adjust their teaching platforms and learning expectations alongside widespread lockdowns across the United States, and the world. Research on "ungrading" has grown in recent years. Yet, research on the first person student experience of ungrading practices is still lacking. This dissertation contributes to this limited research. To address research questions focused on the student experience of "ungrading" (for undergraduate students), I conducted interviews with students who were in a course with an educator who used ungrading practices in the Spring 2023 semester. My student participants were from six courses, across five institutions. I also interviewed the educators who designed and taught these six courses. I conducted 99 interviews with 38 undergraduate students across the Spring 2023 semester: one interview at the beginning, one in the middle, and one at the end of the semester (28 students completed all three rounds). The need for further research to address claims and debates about ungrading as a more equitable practice than traditional grading led me to focus my findings and analysis on three student groups specifically: neurodivergent students, first generation college students, and students who had negative experiences of ungrading. To address my research questions, I first drew out themes of experience from each of these groups. For my study's analysis, I then considered these themes through an analytic framework based on theorist and educator bell hooks' concept of engaged pedagogy.