The article, ‘belonging through assessment’, was insightful around positive and negative implications of changing to a pass/fail grading system in some institutions. Following a collaborative research project with the following educators:
Professor Samantha Broadhead – who focused on the integration and use of pass/fail grading on a masters level course focused on developing creative practice.
Dr Neil Currant – who focused on a trial that was run during the COVID pandemic in integrating pass/fail systems to the first year of study at UAL.
Peter Hughes – who also explored integrating a pass/fail system in Leeds art university for the first year during the pandemic.
Positives
It was interesting to read that across the three disciplines, there was generally less stress and anxiety. Students became less competitive, more collaborative and willing to share and more likely to take risks. They were also more interested in the learning and the production of knowledge rather than the reproduction of knowledge and chasing grades.
In the UAL report suggested that progression rates for Black and Asian students has increased against their white peers, that the attainment gap decreased when had pass/fail.
Overall, it had also opened up a conversation about that the pathway’s were actually for? What did education want to achieve? Professor Sam’s insight stated that the goal of their course was to enable students to sustain their practices beyond study with a healthy network of peers.
Negatives
Some of the negatives raised in the discussion were reflective in many ways of the positives and included an increase of stress and anxiety due to social conditioning of graded systems in education from very early on. Some students saw a pass grade as ‘just’ passing even if the language written within the feedback reflected that of an ‘A’ grade and in some instances could be demotivating (particularly for typically ‘high’ achieving students). In the situation of the pass/fail being used within the first-year but introducing a graded system in the second year, it caused more stress to students as they didn’t have a clear indication of where they were at.
Challenges
Integrating pass/fail into a system that is set up to support grades, particularly challenging in an honors degree, of which internal grading systems mimic final outcome grades and has evolved over time to become a sorting mechanism to allow employers to pick the ‘cream of the crop’. Potential problems with regulations, for example, grade penalties for late submission – which also raises the question of if this is an ethical use of grade incentive anyway?
My thoughts
Pass/fail in the first year could be a very good way of taking the pressure off students while they are adjusting to higher education and often independent living (sometimes in a completely new country) for the first time. It could encourage them to be more explorative within their work, without concerning themselves with if the work is X grade. Perhaps we could ask them to put together a body of work at the end of the year, featuring the elements that they are most proud of for a graded assessment if they want to – in order to mentally prepare them for the adjustment to graded system in second year? That way they would know at the very least that their work is already a pass grade, but would allow for an indication as to what level they are working at? Or, we could consider offering grading as optional on a pass/fail unit – as trialed by the university of Singapore.