Overview

Ungrading is a philosophy of assessment that privileges support for intrinsic motivation and personalized learning. Acknowledging that extrinsic rewards stymy intrinsic motivation, ungrading typically removes formal, top-down grading structures in favor of regular peer and instructor feedback and either a) student reflection and self-evaluation, or b) contract-based grading that is often holistic in nature.

Project-based learning (PBL) encourages student-led inquiry through work on real-world projects. PBL integrates content learning with transferrable skills and community-mindedness, in both teambased and individual contexts. In PBL, the faculty member is not an instructor but rather a mentor, able to offer content expertise, guidance navigating issues as they arise, and structure for engaging in long-term project work.

Ungrading and PBL are in close philosophical alignment. Projects provide opportunities for intrinsic motivation, students take control of their own learning, and both student and faculty learn a great deal over the course of the project. PBL requires embracing that students and faculty alike will learn skills, content, and approaches that move beyond a set of expectations laid out at the start of the project. Self-evaluation approaches are especially useful for PBL, as they explicitly ask students to reflect upon their learning and advocate--with evidence--for the grade they believe they have earned. This affords students a great deal of freedom and flexibility in their project work, allowing them to do the work that makes the most sense for their own learning. It effectively extends the "student-led" nature of PBL, keeping the instructor in the role of a mentor rather than judge, thus building a relationship between student and faculty that is founded in trust and mutual interest in project success and learning.

However, this move away from rigidity for both work and assessment exposes existing challenges, as well as creates new ones, for students and faculty who have grown accustomed to heavily structured learning environments. Following reflection on four years of self-reflection-based assessment and an analysis of student self-reflections (both initial and final) in a large, ungraded, project-based course, I have identified three main challenges with existing self-evaluation approaches that this toolkit aims to provide supports for: reflective writing for assessment, motivation and goal-setting, and time management in flexible project work environments.

Reflective Writing. Limited experience with reflective writing (or even reflection in general) leads to highly varied, and often limited, ability to provide the kind of depth of reflection necessary for a self-evaluation. This leads to difficulty with assessing their own strengths and weaknesses without comparison against other students, which risks reinforcing student anxiety and harming self-esteem. Combined with the external pressure to earn a "good" grade, this also leads some students to overinflate their self-evaluation, and others to under-report, often to the detriment of students with marginalized identities. Even for students who are strong in reflective writing, though, it can be difficult for faculty to interpret student learning in the context of the project and/or class. Every project is different, every student is different, and every term is different; faculty rarely have time to do their own reflection on the course before assigning final grades, at which point it's too late to identify anything they wish had been done differently.

Motivation and Goal-Setting. While it's good practice for students to reflect upon their own goals and proactively design their learning experience in accordance with what motivates them, students often struggle with establishing clear goals or even reflecting on what motivates them in their studies. Whether because of an overreliance on extrinsic reward and motivation, or executive dysfunction that limits goal-setting ability, students often struggle with clearly stating what motivates them in their project work. PBL partially addresses this challenge through establishing projects that are inherently motivating; yet when students complete their initial reflection, they do not yet know what project they will work on. And while the project work may provide motivation, it does not necessarily address the broader issue where students have difficulty expressing their motivation for learning in the first place.

Time Management and Executive Function. A sudden lack of structure and externally-imposed expectations is jarring and leads to confusion over how to manage and prioritize time against competing demands (e.g. other coursework, a job, or social activities). It is common for students to report deprioritizing work for their ungraded projects and courses because their other courses have rigid deadlines and strict grading criteria. Other students struggle with executing on long-term projects that may change over time, or on maintaining their focus on a project that can never be perfectly completed. Even seasoned professionals can find it difficult to manage time under conditions with competing priorities and complex tasks -- students who may be encountering these challenges for the first time are especially apt to need support and mentorship.

This toolkit includes the following:

• A framework for reflection-based assessment that aims to address flaws in fully self-evaluation-based ungrading approaches for PBL through blending completion-based contract grading, student self-reflection and evaluation, and instructor reflection

• Sample prompts for student and instructor reflections

• Ideas for how to support developing executive function--and accommodating executive dysfunction--in ungraded PBL contexts

• Links to external resources and additional reading related to ungrading, neurodiversity, and executive function