Theme: Reimagining the Grading Paradigm

The Lightning Talks speaker event is a reflection and learning forum where Boston University faculty and invited guests identify areas of challenge and opportunity and share strategies for engaging educational experiences in the in-person environment. The speaker series, co-hosted by Digital Learning & Innovation and The Center for Teaching & Learning, is open to BU faculty, staff, graduate students, and postdoctoral scholars.

Why and how we grade are questions that have preoccupied instructors for decades. Teaching and learning in the pandemic opened up even more questions, not only about purpose and practice, but also about equity and access. This Lightning Talks series explores of alternatives to traditional grading with instructors who have investigated these questions through the lens of “ungrading.”

Topics include:

• Rethinking Grading Using DEI Frameworks
• From Wheelock to BU: Perspectives on Grading and Gatekeeping in Math
• Rethinking Grading in STEM: Equity, Access and Opportunity
• Reducing Coding Anxiety through Self Assessment (and Drag Queens): Ungrading CAS AN/BI 588
• Three Different Ways to Ungrade: Contract Grading, Completion Grading, and Self Grading

View the Lightning Talks presentation here.

About the Moderator: Carrie Preston, Director, Kilachand Honors College

Carrie Preston earned a BA from Michigan State University and master’s and doctoral degrees from Rutgers. Her research and teaching interests include forced displacement, modernist literature, performance, and dance, and critical studies of race and gender. Her book, Learning to Kneel: Noh, Modernism, and Journeys in Teaching, was published by Columbia University Press in 2016, and her new book Complicit Participation: The Liberal Audience for Anti-racist Theater is forthcoming.