Entrance Slip: Effects of Grades and Marks on Learning (Option 2)

As someone who recently finished undergrad and immediately jumped into the Education program, the jump from having grades and exams to a pass/fail system was very liberating. I agree with the key findings of the article, especially that "tests and grades cause significant stress for students" (p. 5). Exams were always a major source of stress for me and whenever I studied for exams, more often than not, it felt like I was cramming and memorizing as much information for the exam, only to forget it right after, so learning was not fun and a lot of it was not retained. 

A funny coincidence but I recently watched a TEDx Talk by Mark Rober that also touched on a "points" system in a game experiment and how its role affected people's learning. The fear of losing points and getting a low score significantly reduced people's attempts at the problem as well as their learning/success rates. I thought that this was really similar to how grades/marks affect students' learning in school. The fear of doing something wrong and getting a low score restricts students' creativity, their curiosity to try new things and explore different ideas. Therefore, the intrinsic motivation to learn and try new things is lost because of the idea that grades are most important so it's best to stick to what's known: the simple formula/method to get the right answer so they can get a good grade.

I think some assessment is good to assess what level students' understandings are at and where their strengths and weaknesses lie so they can find where they could focus their attention on to improve. However, I feel a lot of times, the grades system simply ranks students and makes them feel like that is their worth when really, it's so much more than what grade they get on a test, but how much they've persevered and grown as a whole. Maybe it would help to ease the worry about grades a little if students could have many fun and creative mini problem solving activities that weren't for marks but simply kept for assessing progress over time. In this way, students can also take part in discussing their grade (if a grade is needed) for each unit by referring back to their portfolio of work, what they've learned, areas of improvement and their growth throughout.