A Sense of Doubt blog post #2458 - Labor Based Grading - Using the Gimme - Thoughts on policy in LBG Courses

A Sense of Doubt blog post #2458 - Labor Based Grading - Using the Gimme - Thoughts on policy in LBG Courses


Leave it to students to find the loopholes.

I know I would find them. I like loopholes. I like exploiting loopholes. I get it.

As a student, I can think of few team projects that I actually liked. In one class, I all but demanded of the teacher that she switch me to another group because, as I claimed, "I cannot work with those people." And of course that was the whole point of the collaboration as a learning experience. Learn to work with those one cannot work with.

In graduate school, though there were several reasons for me to drop Playwrighting, the biggest was this guy named GREG in the class, and I couldn't stand him. Obnoxious asshole. I was also taking too many classes and needed to reduce my work load given that I was moonlighting as a teacher at another school. But had GREG not been in that class, I would have stayed, at least past the first week.

I do not often share announcements from class, but I am proud of this one.

So, if you do not know what LABOR BASED GRADING is, please examine the links below that explain.

In short, it's a contract-assessment system, in which students do not receive grades until the final grade. Their progress is tracked by status-assessments, and so assignments are complete or incomplete based on requirements and criteria. In some cases, instructors award complete simply for doing the thing whether it's done "right" or not. Others apply "labor instructions" to the assessment, so if the student meets a basic set of requirements, then they earn complete. Since these "statuses" are not grades, students often have chances to convert incompletes to complete with additional labor, meeting requirements.

In my contract, we have a "GIMME," which is a free pass. In the final assessment, students can apply the gimme to convert an incomplete to complete for an assignment that they missed/skipped or for an assignment in which they failed to meet requirement conditions.

After assigning an adaptive-learning, online grammar quiz that can be a lot of work, especially for those who struggle with the learning, students were applying their gimme to this assignment in large numbers because, duh, students like to avoid work. I am not different when I am a student. Time is a thing. If I have the time, and I like what I am doing, I am happy to do tons of extra work on a project. However, I often do not have the time, and so I look for ways to make my work easier and less time-consuming.

And so, I made a rule in my contract that the GIMME could not be applied to this grammar quiz thing known as InQUIZitive (heh, get it?).

They can still miss assignments and earn a B, which is the default grade. They can do extra work to make up for missing or incomplete work to raise a C to a B or a B to an A.

So, they have options.

At the time of creating the contract for this FALL OF 2021, I contemplated what other work students might skip and how I might add other non-GIMME-eligible assignments to my policy. And yet, I did not want to weaken the power of the GIMME. I wanted students to have agency and options.

And so...

We have TWO group projects. Not too involved. The second of the two is more work than the first, but we also are about to enter a time period with no class for TWO WEEKS due to Veteran's Day and a week of conferences. We do not meet again after yesterday (Tuesday 11/09) until Tuesday 11/23. They meet with me once either 11/16 or 11/18, and the campus is closed on 11/11.

In this time, they have work, but less than usual. We are done with video-based assignments except for the final one. This second group assignment is #11 of 12. They have a peer review of Essay Three, the conference with me on the first draft of Essay Three, the two previous essays to be revising for the final portfolio, and other than missed work that may be still eligible to be made up, they have two weeks with much less work than usual due to no class.

Given the free time, given the college's commitment to team work assignments as it's one of the Global Skills we assess every five years, given the fact that cultural and historical context is important to their Essay Three and the group work supports that, given that the group assignment is then PRESENTED to all of us, I just assumed that everyone would do the group assignment and not look for ways to get out of it.

Silly me.

And looking back on my own past and how I tried to get out of things like this, I should not cast aspersions. After all, Pot meet kettle. You're both blackened from the fire.

And so, as you can see from the announcement below, I did some thinking about the question about pre-emptively using the gimme to skip the group assignment and decided to not add or change policy in Week Eight, which seems unfair.

And yet, clearly I am trying to use a guilt trip on the students to shame them into participating with my blatant "bailing on your team" analogy. After all, I teach a lot of the athletes on campus. They "get" that comparison.

I am curious to see what reactions I might get from my students about my message.



I have written about the LBG method, here:

A Sense of Doubt blog post #2044 - Labor Based Grading and the contract

A Sense of Doubt blog post #2114 - Labor Based Grading - is it working?

A Sense of Doubt blog post #2300 - Labor-based Grading vs. Mastery Grading, part three

Greetings writers, 

One of your brethren asked a really good question about the gimme:

"May I use my "gimme" on the group assignment #11?"

I had to think about my answer, and I felt my answer would best be delivered in writing, here, in this announcement.

SHORT ANSWER: Yes, you may use your gimme that way. There is nothing in the contract that prevents you doing so.

BUT... (LONGER ANSWER)...

Is it the "right" thing to do?

After all, nationally, there are lots of discussion about your individual rights to do a thing and whether that choice is the "right" thing to do.

The brief version here is that bailing on the group assignment deprives your group of your labor. This choice to not participate but use the gimme to earn credit anyway is like being on a team and refusing to go into the game when called but still earning a "win" or a "save" even without throwing any pitches, except that your team may not actually "win." You just earn a "win" for your own personal stats.

AND WHAT IF, everyone in the group chose to use their gimmes this way? It would BREAK my assignment.

What if the whole class decided to use the gimme in this way on this assignment?

It's kind of like a walk out. Or a mutiny.

There's all kinds of walk outs: some for good reasons, some for reasons we might not think are so good.

CHANGE THE CONTRACT

Text in the contract gives me the right to change the terms of the contract:

“CH-CH-CHH-CHANGES” as Mr. Bowie said.

I reserve the right to change any of its rules and parameters if I discover a serious flaw in the construction of the contract and how it affects the work. As administrator, I have final say on these changes; however, in the spirit of fairness, I will first PROPOSE the change, open the change to discussion, listen fairly to objections to the change, and then implement a version of the change, possibly taking into account the discussion of the proposed change.

SO, I could propose a change and take a vote. 

Or I could just decide, as the contract stipulates, after a period of discussion.

Feel free to weigh in on this issue in the comment box below.

I would propose to disallow using the gimme on the group assignment because to do so is to either deprive your group members of your labor OR, if all members decide to bail, then deprive the class of your efforts, and we do not learn about the subject area your group has been assigned. You all abstain.

 

HOWEVER, making a change now seems late, and it seems that it would be made now just to force one student who has inquired about maybe skipping assignment 11 to do work the group on that assignment. I am not sure how fair that is as a thing to do.

AGAIN, MY ANSWER:

I am not going to try to make a change to the contract, so assignment 11 will be available for the gimme to provide credit for it; however, here's some thoughts about applying your gimme in this way:

GIMME NOT SUPPOSED TO BE PRE-EMPTIVE: I always insist that we wait to apply your gimme in the last conference so that it gets applied to a thing you missed because of circumstances beyond your control, or because you earned an incomplete on it despite your best efforts. The "missed" could include "ignored," as in purposefully skipped, but it's intended to be a saving tool applied later after failure not a pre-emptive tool to choose not to complete a difficult assignment for whatever reason one has to avoid that assignment.

BAILING ON A GROUP ASSIGNMENT LEAVES OTHERS DOING MORE LABOR:  I know you are all busy and an assignment like number eleven for groups may seem like a big chunk of work. It's not a quickie, sure, but it may not be as hard as it looks AND it is surely more difficult for the other people on your team if you choose not to participate. You are all in this education thing together, after all.

And I don't think all three or four members of a group would choose to use their gimme this way. I could see a group of three becoming a group of one and that person is doing WAY MORE work than they would with the help of the two teammates who chose to sit out.

YOU HAVE TWO WEEKS OF NO CLASS TO DO THIS THING!!  Though you have essays to write and revise, a peer review, and a conference, some of those things you would have any way, and you do have a freedom from SIX HOURS AND FORTY-FIVE MINUTES of class time that is not being held (2.15 hrs times three), and I am not filling that time with extra videos or class assignments that you might have otherwise. I believe that about seven hours is more than enough time to complete this work and if each of three or four team members (I know some are just two, sorry). If a team spent 21 hours on this assignment, I would have to consider some extra credit thing as that is more time than most students spend in Canvas this entire quarter let alone on one assignment.

ASSIGNMENT 11 IS IMPORTANT FOR YOU AND US: All of you are doing important investigations that will help us best understand course content and may contribute to historical and cultural context that you need in your analysis (essay three).

Your group not only learns about context from which we can all benefit, but then, it shares this context with our class so that we can all benefit from what your group learns.

This assignment is not just about individual learning but about your group learning and working together and then our whole class learning.

The only reason the "gimme" is available for use on this assignment is that I did not foresee any actually asking to use it in this way. Believe me, that's going to change for the next time I teach this course.

THE BOTTOM LINE

If you skip assignment 11, in conference four will you be allowed to apply your gimme to it? Yes. The contract allows for that choice, and I feel it's too late to change that policy even though I have the power to do so, and I don't even have to involve you in that process. I can just change it.

Should you use the gimme this way? Clearly, I do not think so. But I am not in charge of your decisions. My policy allows for this action, and given my commitment to fairness and ethics, I have to allow it if I want to love with myself.

If you read all of this, thank you.

I am interested in your thoughts if you want to share them.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2111.10 - 10:10

- Days ago = 2322 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.

MY OFFICE: