Educators often ask their students to take risks but we often miss the mark when it comes to establishing an environment in which to do so. We recently made a switch within my department to a mastery based grading system in which we allow revisions of work and do not take points off assignments for being turned in late. This approach is well grounded in research but has not been without its critics who often say things such as, "How will they learn responsibility?" "If they know they can go back and fix things why would they put any effort into their work?" and "They need to learn to deal with failure."
The switch certainly requires some reflection on the nature of grades and what they should mean. Students are also not used to such a system and have become used to chasing grades instead of focusing on the process.
The following is a 2 second conversation that I had this week that illustrates the process at work though:
Student: You said here that I need to add evidence to make the discussion post better right?
Me: Right.
Student: So if I go back and add the evidence I can earn a higher score?
Me: Yes.
She went back and added evidence and her score was updated. She didn't have to wait until the next time we did a discussion post to act on the feedback and the score she wound up with reflected her true ability to use evidence to support an argument.
Something in her reaction let me know that a shift had occurred for her and that's all that needs to be said about learning responsibility, effort, and dealing with failure.
