I recently spoke with Eliana Crosina, lead co-author of a new paper presenting the results of a longitudinal study of students in a yearlong, experiential entrepreneurship course — a setting where the need to make sense of setbacks is especially acute.
The paper, published in Academy of Management Learning and Education, examines “critical incidents” — problems with projects or challenges with teammates that spark a negative emotion — students faced and how students’ engagement with elements of the course helped them process those feelings and keep going.
While the entrepreneurship course her team studied differs from a conventional college course, Crosina, an assistant professor of entrepreneurship at Babson College, shared some insights that could apply to instructors in other settings.
Professors can normalize struggle: Academic settings can condition students to focus on performance, chasing a good grade. But the entrepreneurship course was structured to emphasize process. It’s not unique in that regard — similar models exist in other project-based courses, including writing courses, and there are grading systems designed to encourage this mindset, too.
In the entrepreneurship course, Crosina said, professors “help students process the struggle, giving them language to express it.” That reminded me, I told her, of efforts by some STEM instructors to convey that failure comes with the territory of scientific work, sometimes by giving examples of times when they encountered setbacks themselves.
If students are likely to face challenges, priming them to expect that, and to know that it can lead to learning, can help set them up to persist.
Professors can coach: The entrepreneurship course has a coaching model, allowing professors to give more personalized feedback outside of class. The researchers write that instructors may want to find ways to provide students with more tailored support, “specifically around points where tension and anxiety may be heightened,” adding that “doing so requires educators to be less bound to the classroom as the sole teaching space.” In a conventional course, that might take place during office hours.
Professors can acknowledge small wins: Students’ entrepreneurial ventures didn’t always work, but professors still encouraged students to acknowledge “small wins” like working well with their teammates or breaking even despite not turning a profit. Keeping those small wins in mind helps students persist. That reminded me of the way many instructors attend to students’ progress and provide feedback about what students are doing well, not only what they got wrong.
Professors can turn to their colleagues: The professors teaching the entrepreneurship course have created a community where they can get ideas and advice from one another, Crosina noted. Such support is critical, especially when instructors aim to teach in an open and emotionally engaged way.
Have you found ways to help students learn through struggle or failure on a project, or difficulties working with group members? Tell me your strategies at beckie.supiano@chronicle.com and I may include your example in a future issue of the newsletter.
The problem of final grades
Professors who use ungrading deemphasize grades in an effort to focus students’ attention on their learning rather than their performance. But for instructors who use the practice in a conventional setting, there’s always been an awkward coda when they are still required to assign final grades. One common approach is to grade collaboratively, usually by having students assign their own grades and explain their reasoning, while the instructor reserves the right to adjust them.
In a recent guest post for the Grading for Growth blog, Jayme Dyer argues that this collaborative process is subject to instructors’ — and possibly students’ — implicit biases. Because course grades can open or close doors for students, this risks deepening systemic inequities. As a result, Dyer writes, she won’t ungrade a course again. “Perhaps the costs from inequitable allocation of grades are outweighed by the boost to learning and student autonomy that comes from ungrading,” Dyer writes. “But without sufficient research, I’m not convinced yet.”
Dyer’s post resonates with the discomfort Emily Pitts Donahoe describes in a recent post in her newsletter, Unmaking the Grade, about assigning final grades in an ungraded course.
Dyer’s guest post also led to some thoughtful discussion among Grading for Growth readers, including a comment from Lindsay Masland, who wrote that the relationship between ungrading and equity is not yet clear, a reminder that “there is no golden ticket or magic pill in teaching, no matter how hard we look for one.”
Masland’s comment reminded me of something Regan A.R. Gurung shared in a story I wrote in 2022 about questions raised by Robert Talbert about whether ungrading could worsen existing disparities among students. Before trying ungrading, Gurung said, professors should think through their reasons. “There are a lot of problems with grades. Which one are you trying to solve? Are you trying to solve pressure? Are you trying to solve reliability? Are you trying to solve bias?”
Pinpoint your own goal, Gurung advised, and then start small.
It’s been fascinating to watch more professors try ungrading, especially those who wrestle publicly with its challenges and unintended consequences. If you’re following along with this discussion — whether you’ve decided for or against trying ungrading yourself — I’d love to hear from you: beckie.supiano@chronicle.com.
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— Beckie
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