“Crocuses” by Peter Stenzel via Flickr CC BY-ND 2.0
The CUNY-wide group of leaders from the centers for teaching and learning, call CITA (CUNY Innovative Teaching Academy) shares the following upcoming events for the month of March. If you attend any and want to share information or ideas with colleagues here at City Tech, please consider adding them to this Open Pedagogy on the Open Lab site.
You’ve likely seen this call for abstracts in your email and in other places you see announcements:
CUNY will be hosting its next Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Access Conference on March 30 and 31, 2023, the theme of which will be The Illusion of Inclusion – Collaborative Solutions for Performative Diversity. The conference is seeking an array of solutions within the CUNY context. Proposals may be based on research, teaching or practice, and designed to spark engagement and discussion. Proposals that include collaborations with CUNY staff and/or students are encouraged. Topics may include: From Data to Action; Disability Inclusion; Designing Inclusive Pedagogies; Organizational Equity – Systems, People, Culture; Physical and Mental Health Pre- & Post-Quarantine: Our New Syndemic Normal.Â
Completed proposals must be submitted by January 4, 2023.Â
Are there ways you see your engagement with open pedagogy as the basis for a proposal for this conference? Does your work on the OpenLab grapple with the conference theme? Would you be interested in sharing your abstract or presentation materials on the OpenLab, either here on Open Pedagogy on the OpenLab or in your portfolio or other space? The OpenLab team is committed to prioritizing inclusion, diversity, equity, and access, and we hope to amplify this work here at City Tech, at CUNY, and beyond.
On Behalf of the Queens College Center for Teaching and Learning & Queens College Project Reach (QCPR)Â
Please join us as we embark on another journey of our continuing discussion revolving around Universal Design Learning.
Over the past decade, there has been a substantial increase in the number of Autistic College students (ACS) enrolling in postsecondary education. However, there are distinct challenges faced by ACS and neurodivergent students in their path to graduation. We will discuss learner variability and some of the difficulties that may be experienced by students and instructors. We will also describe how both knowledge of neurodiversity and use of principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) may create a supportive, inclusive learning environment for all students, which may improve student outcomes.
This event will be virtual (via Zoom) from 12 noon to 1:00 pm on June 15th, 2022. Register for the session here: https://forms.office.com/r/erfdvUU05N
The OpenLab is a great place to host a website for an event, taking advantage of its openness to make it available to members of your group both inside and outside of City Tech and the public in general.
Today’s EcoFest 2022 Conference is a great example of this. You’ve probably seen the EcoFest site pop up in the Projects section of the OpenLab. If you want to learn more, attend their conference today! Please also share with students, colleagues, and friends!
Here’s what the conference organizers shared to welcome everyone to the EcoFest conference today:
Greetings City Tech community,
EcoFest has been the College’s Earth Day-centered event for the past 7 years. It is an opportunity for faculty, staff, and students to celebrate environmental successes and educate each other concerning the huge challenges we face.
The theme of this year’s EcoFest Conference is Crisis: It’s Time to Take Action. The event will have a hybrid format: there will be live panels and presentations in the Academic Building lobby and theater, and it will be shared synchronously as a Zoom webinar. Last year’s conference had 140 viewers and more than 50 participants. We are planning on even more viewers for EcoFest 2022. The conference schedule is designed so the panels coincide with the times college courses are taking place. Faculty are encouraged to bring their classes. Join us in person in the New Academic Complex Theater or, if you cannot attend live, join via Zoom webinar(registration required). See the full schedule or download the full schedule.
We look forward to seeing you on the 28th!
Thank you, City Tech Campus Sustainability Council
Dr. Zeemont wanted to discuss the process of putting together a collaborative article including NTT and precarious academic workers alongside students for the article, while Adjunct Assistant Professor Stella discussed the importance of including citations in her own course syllabi, both to help explain ungrading policies to students, but also to stave off any potential conflicts with administration. Including citations provides scholarly context for ungrading and demonstrates that an instructor practicing different forms of ungrading is not a rogue agent, but rather part of a larger movement towards equity and anti-racism in higher education.Â
Zeemont closed the co-authors’ discussion by reminding attendees that ungrading is not reserved for expensive private colleges, and that incorporating understanding of students’ material conditions is necessary for liberatory pedagogy.
One of our discussion questions for this event asked participants to consider the connection between ungrading and open digital pedagogy, which is really the focal point of all the OpenLab Open Pedagogy events we plan each semester. While we did not come away with easy answers, we were better able to understand how material inequalities impact our students. Unstable wireless, shared and out-of-date devices, and other technological deficits impact student access to their online courses, while unstable housing, surging inflation, and exploitative working conditions all impact our students’ ability to focus on their studies, and also impact precarious academic workers such as adjunct classroom instructors, non-teaching adjuncts, and college assistants.
In short, expecting learning to take place seamlessly because we have an engaging and flexible platform like the OpenLab does not impact the material conditions that may block student access to the site, and open digital pedagogy cannot be framed as a utopian cure-all. Instead, we learned to focus on student-centered learning, which requires really listening to students’ needs and concerns.
Last semester, we met to discuss ungrading! This is part two of a series of Open Pedagogy workshops the OpenLab Community Team is developing to address inequity in assessment and anti-racist pedagogies. For this event, we’ll be joined by co-authors of a recent article from the Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy titled “Resisting Surveillance, Practicing/Imagining the End of Grading” to hear about practical strategies for implementing ungrading into classroom settings.
From the co-authors:
Our article suggests that grading systems in higher education settings are part of a larger network of surveillance technologies that students and faculty are subjected to and/or enact, reflective of schooling’s place in a “carceral continuum” (Shedd) premised on anti-Blackness and colonialism. We do not believe that grading is something that can be made more fair, just, or anti-racist. To resist surveillance in higher education is to embrace the end of grading. After an overview of these contexts and assertions, we offer a series of reflections, tracing juxtaposing moments where we individually or collectively taught, learned, and/or organized outside/against grading systems.
Questions for discussion:
Traditional models of education treat instructor and student as adversarial. Instructors often replicate harmful authoritarian structures by embracing institutional surveillance practices and assumptions, including that students are cheating and must be observed at all times, adopting the role of disciplinarian by reporting student misbehavior to the institution. How do we shift this culture of authoritarianism so common in educators?
Last time we talked about different motivations for learning; what new perspectives do we have on this from discussing ungrading with these scholars?How can we adjust our focus to the intrinsic versus extrinsic values of teaching and learning?
Why are we talking about ungrading as the OpenLab team? What does this have to do with open digital pedagogy?
Last semester, we met to discuss ungrading! This is part two of a series of Open Pedagogy workshops the OpenLab Community Team is developing to address inequity in assessment and anti-racist pedagogies. For this event, we’ll be joined by co-authors of a recent article from the Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy titled “Resisting Surveillance, Practicing/Imagining the End of Grading” to hear about practical strategies for implementing ungrading into classroom settings.
From the co-authors:
Our article suggests that grading systems in higher education settings are part of a larger network of surveillance technologies that students and faculty are subjected to and/or enact, reflective of schooling’s place in a “carceral continuum” (Shedd) premised on anti-Blackness and colonialism. We do not believe that grading is something that can be made more fair, just, or anti-racist. To resist surveillance in higher education is to embrace the end of grading. After an overview of these contexts and assertions, we offer a series of reflections, tracing juxtaposing moments where we individually or collectively taught, learned, and/or organized outside/against grading systems.
Questions for discussion:
Traditional models of education treat instructor and student as adversarial. Instructors often replicate harmful authoritarian structures by embracing institutional surveillance practices and assumptions, including that students are cheating and must be observed at all times, adopting the role of disciplinarian by reporting student misbehavior to the institution. How do we shift this culture of authoritarianism so common in educators?
Last time we talked about different motivations for learning; what new perspectives do we have on this from discussing ungrading with these scholars?How can we adjust our focus to the intrinsic versus extrinsic values of teaching and learning?
Why are we talking about ungrading as the OpenLab team? What does this have to do with open digital pedagogy?
OpenLab at City Tech is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: Open Pedagogy: Ungrading Time: Nov 11, 2021 04:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
*Please RSVP by commenting on this post. Please share this invitation with your colleagues!
As higher education continues to demand rigor and productivity from its workers and students, we’re concerned with the damage of institutional policies that ignore the material realities of many in the CUNY community. The harm of the classroom is compounded by ongoing investment in a “back-to-normal” paradigm without providing any material support to ease the burdens of grief, poverty, illness, and endless demands for productivity. There are no easy answers, especially as individuals working inside institutions over which we have little control.
Ungrading and its accompanying strategies offer one way to mitigate harm. Ungrading is essentially student-centered and student-led, demanding that we engage critically with the power dynamics of the classroom. By incorporating grading policies that center students’ goals, hold space for critical self-reflection, and value the process of learning over a product, we can practice equity in our evaluation criteria, even if our institutional contexts strip agency and justice at every opportunity.
In this event we will consider the following questions:
Questions
Borrowed from Kathleen Alves: Why do teachers grade? How does it feel to be graded? What do you want grading to do for you? Consider as a student and as an instructor.
Grading rewards performance of knowledge over the process of developing knowledge. What strategies can we use to redirect the focus?
Grades often reward students who have educational, class, racial/ethnic, and language privilege and penalize students without these resources. How do we as faculty challenge our own racist, ableist beliefs about how students *should* behave and perform?
On May 7, I presented on “Choose Your Own Grading Schema: An Online Learning Experiment” at the 2021 Bronx EdTech Showcase. Keynote speakers at the showcase included Mariana Regalado (Brooklyn College), Maura Smale (City Tech), and Matt Gold (Graduate Center).
You can download my slides with the link below or by clicking on the image of the title slide.
The title slide of a Powerpoint presentation. Text reads “Choose Your Own Grading Schema: An Online Learning Experiment” Olivia Wood, PhD Candidate in English, CUNY Graduate Center, Graduate Teaching Fellow, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Digital Pedagogy Fellow, City Tech OpenLab
Last semester, after teaching mostly asynchronously with no penalties or cutoffs for late work, the responses I received in students’ end-of-semester reflections were mixed. About half said they were incredibly grateful for the flexibility my class structure offered. The other half said they wished I’d required attendance at the optional Zoom sessions and held them to their deadlines under pain of grade penalty. They recognized that while ideally they would be self-motivated to participate as much as possible, external pressure would have been helpful.
In my presentation, I shared how I revised my syllabus for Spring 2021 to account for both strands of feedback, and how students have responded.
At the beginning of the semester, students chose via Google Form which grading plan they wanted: Structure and Accountability, or Maximum Flexibility. Students on the Structure and Accountability plan were required to attend the weekly Zoom sessions and complete all assignments on the syllabus. Students on the Maximum Flexibility plan were not required to attend Zooms and were only required to complete select assignments marked in bold on the syllabus– unit projects, unit reflections, and a few other smaller tasks– but were still welcome and encouraged to attend class and complete other activities. After each unit, students were given the opportunity to switch grading plans if they wish, after reading an overview of the exact assignment and points breakdown for each plan on the coming unit.
Students responded very positively to this method. About one third chose the Structure and Accountability plan for the first two units, and most students chose the Maximum Flexibility plan for the third unit. Additionally, several students on the flexibility plan also regularly chose to attend the synchronous classes and participate in ungraded activities.
This new system does not appear to have affected the distribution of final grades compared to the Fall 2020 semester, nor was there a clear correlation between the grading plans a student chose for each unit and that student’s success in the course; I have several students making As who chose Structure and Accountability two or more times, but I also have several students making As who chose Maximum Flexibility for all three units.
While the numerical outcomes do not seem to have changed significantly under this new grading system, the students have almost unanimously reported feeling less stressed about the class, feeling trusted and understood, and feeling empowered to make the choices that are best for their own individual lives and situations.
I’m also extremely happy to report that for the first time in my three years of teaching, I don’t have a single student who has withdrawn or “disappeared.” Every student who stopped participating in the course in the middle of the semester has since returned and is turning in work again. While one might assume that no late work penalties will lead to most students leaving the bulk of their work to the last minute (and this is true of a few), most of my students have been turning in their assignments only a few days past the recommended deadlines, and several routinely turn in their assignments early.
After each unit, I asked students to respond to a series of reflection questions, including “What did you do during this unit that helped make you successful?” and “What additional resources/supports do you wish you had had during this unit?” Just as I give them feedback on their writing and ask them to revise, I also asked them for their feedback on my course design that I could use when revising for future semesters.
All but one of my students said that they think I should continue this “multiple-path” grading system in future semesters and wish other professors would do the same. (The other student said they didn’t like the stress of having to choose how they would be graded.)
Take a look through my slides for quotes from my students’ reflections, and if you choose to adapt my system for your own classes, please tell me about it in the comments!
![New York City College of Technology presents EcoFest 2022 Conference: IT'S TIME TO TAKE ACTION! CRISIS
April 28, 2022
8 AM - 5 PM
Register Here [QR code linked to Zoom registration link: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN__ed4gDXVRF6G732_oHKFEw]](https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/openpedagogyopenlab/files/2022/04/image.png)
