169 - Building the Course While Teaching It

What happens when an alternatively graded course moves from the planning stage into an actual classroom? Six weeks into teaching Quantitative Reasoning for Everyday Life for the first time, Sharona goes on the hot seat as Boz asks how the course she spent the summer designing is actually working. They revisit the central idea that finally brought together a seemingly disconnected course in voting, statistics, and finance: the role of human decision-making when multiple mathematically valid approaches are available. Sharona and Boz then dig into the grading architecture built around it. From fourteen learning outcomes and three portfolios to quizzes, investigations, reflection, revision, and reassessment, the conversation looks at how the pieces fit together, what has already needed adjustment, and what it is like to make grading decisions when you can't fall back on points and percentages to create the appearance of certainty. Links Please note - any books linked here are likely Amazon Associates links. Clicking on them and purchasing through them helps support the show. Thanks for your support! Resources The Center for Grading Reform - seeking to advance education in the United States by supporting effective grading reform at all levels through conferences, educational workshops, professional development, research and scholarship, influencing public policy, and community building. The Grading Conference - an annual, online conference exploring Alternative Grading in Higher Education & K-12. Some great resources to educate yourself about Alternative Grading: The Grading for Growth Blog The Grading Conference The Intentional Academia Blog Recommended Books on Alternative Grading: Grading for Growth, by Robert Talbert and David Clark Specifications Grading, by Linda Nilsen Undoing the Grade, by Jesse Stommel Follow us on Bluesky, Facebook and Instagram - @thegradingpod. To leave us a comment, please go to our website: www.thegradingpod.com and leave a comment on this episode's page. If you would like to be considered to be a guest on this show, please reach out using the Contact Us form on our website, www.thegradingpod.com. All content of this podcast and website are solely the opinions of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily represent the views of California State University Los Angeles or the Los Angeles Unified School District. Music Country Rock performed by Lite Saturation, licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.