Why grade? Exploring opportunities for ungrading and alternative grading at University College Tilburg

Traditional forms of grading (i.e. assessing students’ work summatively resulting in a
numerical evaluation) suffer a range of shortcomings. Studies show that in addition to
reducing student motivation (Pulfrey et al., 2011) and negatively affecting well-being
(McMorran & Ragupathi, 2019), grading increases disparities among students from
different backgrounds and with different kinds of talents (Inman & Powell 2018). This
goes against any educational philosophy that strives to promote inclusivity and wellbeing, including the philosophy of University College Tilburg. Therefore, the authors
seek to ascertain whether we can adopt different strategies of assessment that allow
for increased inclusivity in terms of student qualities, backgrounds, and growth.
In this article, we report on the findings of a literature review on the history of grading
and three alternative forms of grading, as well as an exploration of their potential
implementation in the context of University College Tilburg. Our main focus lies on
the benefits and shortcomings of traditional grading and its alternatives. The results
of our interviews show that both students and teachers of University College Tilburg
recognize the limitations of traditional grading but do not see a need for a radical shift
in our grading paradigm. We therefore propose smaller changes that can be made in
our grading practice, such as making grading more transparent, giving students a
bigger role in deciding what they want to learn, facilitating students’ self-reflection,
and providing support via narrative feedback.