Conventional grading systems hinder students’ progress during COVID-19

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By Kaveri Pillai ’23

Staff Writer

As I sit in front of my laptop at an ungodly hour attending synchronous classes, I cannot ignore how different my college experience was a year ago. A swift shift from in-person classes to what we now call “Zoom school” has reconfigured our ideas of what school means to us. However, while some things have dramatically changed for me as a sophomore, there are other components of my academic routine that have remained the same — and not for the best. 

While around 250 million college students consider the four walls of the classroom their second home, the pandemic has resulted in a displacement of the regular learning process. The establishment of online schooling comes with a new set of rules and features, many of which consist of learning strategies for navigating remote learning. However, a number of students around the world, including myself, have found themselves questioning the efficacy and relevance of a lot of the in-person features being replicated online. 

One of those key features is the grading system. With the world changing so rapidly around us, sticking with conventional grading and learning programs is counterproductive to students’ online school experience. 

The inception of the traditional A to F letter grading system can be traced back to the 1940s. A practice that is still — shockingly enough — being used by schools globally, it essentially gives extra importance to high-stakes submissions, like final exams and research papers. Still, many believe that, with the already stressful and unpredictable changes caused by the pandemic, student anxiety about the impact of letter grades on their GPAs is unnecessary and avoidable.  

  In 2020, Best Colleges released an article touching upon some of the alternate grading schemes that professors are testing out this academic year, many of which have gotten great student responses. “Epic finales” act as final exam replacements during which students are encouraged to work on reflection essays. In terms of grading, importance is given to group discussions and projects rather than time-intensive final essays. The pass/fail grading system is another popular strategy adopted by many institutions that acknowledge the emphasis on learning rather than the final product. Specification grading marks whether a task has been completed and gives students the opportunity to incorporate feedback and make revisions, thereby eliminating the traditional one-time submission rule. 

Some Mount Holyoke professors, like Assistant Professor of Geography and International Relations Serin Houston, have adopted this method. “The spec grading system immediately resonated with me because it allowed me to be attentive to the profoundly challenging realities of our times, acknowledge the work students were doing within this context, offer extensive feedback to support learning and foster equity within my online courses,” Houston said. 

In an article titled “Scores of students are getting F’s: What’s the point of failing them during COVID-19?,”  USA Today highlighted the many changes that the distance learning program has to acknowledge that go beyond a student’s school life. When the pandemic first hit in 2019, families across the globe were left to fend for themselves, whether that meant working alone to ensure health and financial stability or taking care of loved ones in crisis. Domestic responsibilities increased for many students who have spent the last year at home, and some of them are burdened with additional financial duties. For these students, doing well at school right now is just another obstacle. 

While schools must ensure academic success and rigor even in these stressful times, many believe that institutions’ approaches to achieving this goal has to change. The need to revolutionize the grading system to match with these changing societal circumstances is another important duty that schools need to take seriously for the sake of student welfare. 

Professor of Sociology, Director of Nexus and Chair of Sociology and Anthropology Eleanor Townsley believes in the need for rapid change in reaction to COVID-19. “Coming into the compressed, remote module format last fall, my guess was that high-stakes graded assignments were likely to create anxiety rather than learning,” Townsley said. Not only were Mount Holyoke students experiencing online school for the first time, but they were now expected to take the usual 15-week course load and complete it in seven short weeks. 

At the end of the day, none of these contemporary grading ideas should be temporary. While we cannot ignore the important role alternate grading systems play in this pandemic-induced remote learning system, their benefits go beyond the current COVID-19-infected world we live in. The archaic testing criteria and the arbitrary system of assessing students with percentage scores does nothing but show what students have managed to achieve rather than how they have achieved it. 

The revolutionized state of grading that we see today has a long way to go if it intends to keep up with the advances of society. One can hope that the teachers among us can see how advantageous these changes are in creating a more holistic student experience, and that they will continue to work on making the classroom, whether it is in person or remote, a more enjoyable and knowledgeable place.