Undoing the Grade w/Jesse Stommel

To me, ungrading means raising an eyebrow at grades as a system, and doing whatever we can to knock down the barriers that grades present to the work of teaching and learning.

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Jesse Stommel is a faculty member in the Writing Program at University of Denver. He is also co-founder of Hybrid Pedagogy: the journal of critical digital pedagogy and Digital Pedagogy Lab. He has a PhD from University of Colorado Boulder. He is co-author of An Urgency of Teachers: the Work of Critical Digital Pedagogy.

Jesse is a documentary filmmaker and teaches courses about pedagogy, film, digital studies, and composition. Jesse experiments relentlessly with learning interfaces, both digital and analog, and his research focuses on higher education pedagogy, critical digital pedagogy, and assessment. He’s got a rascal pup, Emily, a clever cat, Loki, and a badass daughter, Hazel.

Originally aired as a live Community Gathering, where Vanessa Ellis interviewed Jesse on his book, Undoing the Grade: Why We Grade, and How to Stop, and then opened the floor to questions for participants.

Topics include

• Do we need the word 'ungrading'? Why can this term be problematic?

• What ungrading has looked like throughout Jesse’s career

• How the work of scholars like bell hooks, Kevin Gannon, and Paulo Freire have influenced Jesse’s ungrading philosophy

• Why ungrading is not ideologically neutral work

• How ungrading can empower students and support their agency

• Why ungrading is less about shifting policies and more about building community

• The "necessary practices" educators must implement to make teaching and learning more equitable

Other resources

Blog posts included in Jesse’s book:

• An Introduction to Ungrading

• Toward a Cointentional Approach to Assessment

• Ungrading for Equity