TLISI offers Georgetown University faculty and staff from all campuses the opportunity to explore strategies for excellence in teaching and learning. This year’s Institute will focus on several topic areas, including effective teaching and learning practices, inclusive pedagogies, technology-enhanced learning, Ignatian pedagogy, cross-institutional and cross-departmental collaborations, and more.
We hope you’ll join us in our efforts to make TLISI "green"! We’re partnering with the Office of Sustainability to reduce the environmental impact from this year’s Institute by providing compostable materials and expanding our recycling presence. Each registrant will also receive a free aluminum water bottle upon picking up your name badge at registration. You can help us Go Green by bringing your reusable water bottle back with you each day, as we will be limiting our supply of single-use plastics throughout the week. Stop by our information table anytime Monday-Thursday to learn about ways that you can help your office Go Green!
In a provocative post on his blog last spring, Jesse Stommel suggested a simple but profound change in faculty behavior: “If you're a teacher and you hate grading, stop doing it.” Stommel’s challenge is just one salvo in a national discussion about whether assigning letter grades helps students learn. At the heart of the conversation are questions about what grades measure, how they affect student motivation, and the seemingly radical idea that grades can actually get in the way of learning.
This spring, we decided to test these ideas by designing first-year writing courses in which we would provide students with plenty of feedback on their writing but no letter grades on their assignments. In this report, we’ll explain why we decided to try ungrading, describe what we did, and offer our reflections and share comments from our students about how it affected us and our students. Does “ungrading” make a difference in student learning? In faculty experience? And how does it work for a required course aimed at first-year students?