How might students behave if grades and marks are removed from their course assignments, yet they are still able to obtain the necessary credits for ‘progression’ to the next level in education?  Would their approach to learning, or their ‘philosophy’ of learning, change as a result?  In this article I am going to explore this issue based on experience of designing and then teaching an Access Social Sciences course (for the last half decade) where these very parameters were met.  As this process involves memoir and reflection, and is not a piece of ‘research’, points made in speech marks are not direct quotes but simulations that approximate and typify what (real) students wrote or said.

Returner Adult students often come with poor prior experiences of education, feeling unconfident about their learning abilities and weighed down by negative feedback or outcomes from previous learning experiences, typically in but not confined to a secondary ‘school’ context.  In designing a new Access course (Centre for Open Learning, University of Edinburgh), permission was sought and a decision taken to allow first semester (Aug-Nov) courses to award 10-credits (SCQF Level 7 / QCF Level 4) without assignments being ‘graded’.  The emphasis for students was placed, after admission via interview, on attendance, participation, peer engagement, and assignment submission.  For teachers, it was on ‘assessment for learning’ (AfL) and developing abilities.  Students were expected to complete two courses, from a combination of Access Humanities, Social Sciences, Art & Design, and (later) Languages.  The most popular pathway was a combination of Humanities and Social Sciences.  With the latter combination, each course was designed with 5 assignments of 500 words each, and the assignments were purposely staggered so, from the student’s perspective, two assignments never came in the same week.  The course submissions would ‘leap-frog’ each other: Humanities Assignment 1, then Social Sciences Assignment 1, Humanities Assignment 2, and so on.

Given the nature of Access, with a single Programme and just two course choices feeding all the undergrad degrees in relevant areas (30+ possible degrees in the core social sciences, like politics and sociology, not including law and business), the Access courses had to be interdisciplinary and focused on enhancing key academic literacies.  The Humanities course would focus on subjects such as literature, philosophy, history and art history.  In terms of early assignments within Humanities, students are encouraged to develop argumentation and logic skills with regards to structuring writing, such as knowledge of the substantive points they are making.

In the Social Sciences course I (along with a colleague) designed the 5 assignments around core elements (‘paragraphs’) of a scientific paper, namely, writing from observation, summarising the work of others, turning visual ‘data’ content (graphs, maps) into text, writing responses to analytical questions, and evaluating competing arguments.  Thus, by the time students reach second semester and are expected to write full length essays (1,000 then 2,000 words) they have already written the core component parts (‘paragraphs’) of a classic social science essay and developed some necessary skills (describing qualitative evidence, reading graphs, evaluating claims).  Whereas second semester submissions (the full essays) are graded in the traditional manner, the first semester ones are not – they are all viewed as being ‘formative’ with tutors providing as much (or more) feedforward as feedback.  Tuition aims to be encouraging by highlighting the positives to be carried forth.  The question, then, is ‘how do students respond to the first semester assignments when no grades are being awarded?’

Generally, students have shown initial appreciation – the dread of being ‘graded’ is avoided – but as the course progresses not having access to ‘grades’ becomes an increasing concern for many (though not all) students.  They want to be treated in a more conventional educational manner.  In essence, they begin to ‘map’ their co-ordinates and need to know ‘where’ they are – ‘am I meeting the required grades?’  But the overall effect of ‘holding back’ grading to a later date is not my focus here.  That specific point is part of a wider issue on sense of progression through the programme of study.  What I have chosen to focus on is the way in which students’ prior knowledge and assumptions about the purpose of assignments influences how they tackle the ‘work’ and their own ‘learning’.  In other words, how are they thinking about negotiating and navigating an ‘assignment’?  And, of course, does the fact it’s not being ‘graded’ make a difference, especially at what could be described as a sub-conscious level when they are not being confronted directly by, and thinking about, the issue of ‘non-grading’?

How can I possibly know what the students are thinking when they tackle assignments?  Assignment 2 has a self-reflection exercise built into it.  Before getting into the details of the self-reflection it is best to give readers an idea of the early course content and where the assignment lies (see Table 1).

Subject Matter	Assignment (word limits)	Literacies / Skills
Block 1: Criminology	Media observation: Background information (150) and Detailed description (350)	Accurate descriptive writing (of something chosen by the student).  Detailed account which is non-judgemental nor prejudicial (i.e. avoids biased language).
Block 2: Anthropology	Summarising Exercise: Abstract / summary of chosen 1,000 word extract (350) and Self-reflection (150)	Summarising of 1 (out of 4 possible) ‘extracts’ available, followed by self-reflection on process involved (why they chose the article they did, and what problems its summarisation posed, including in relation to other options).

Assignment 2 is related to the second block on anthropology, though the assignments are not defined / confined by the subject matter of the block they are related to.  Thus, with Assignment 2, the students are given 4 ‘extracts’ (all roughly 1,000 words in length).  They are advised to read all the extracts before making a choice, and not simply plumping for the one that ‘looks’ most appealing to them.  This is one way of extending the disciplinary subject matter studied as only one extract is on anthropology with the remaining three being on sociology, social policy and psychology. 

The extracted papers differ in style, content, and research methodologies used (historic review for sociology, qualitative interviews and life-mapping for social policy, ethnography for anthropology, and experimental review for psychology). Two papers are heavily referenced, with many Harvard-style citations, but the others draw on just a few works.  Specific content varies across mother baby interactions, homeless women compared to securely housed women, the rationalisation of religion and modernity, and the cultural significance of marriage and kinship.  This provides the students with a wide range of parameters to consider when making their ‘choice’ – which extract should I use as the basis of my assignment submission?  They need to consider if a paper is ‘interesting’ to them, easy to read (or not), contains many complex terms they are unsure about, how will they handle in-text citations (do they refer to authors’ mentioned’), should they convey detailed examples or case studies or just go for an over-arching narrative?

The self-reflection then asks students to explain their reasoning (thinking) when making their choice, plus what they found most difficult about summarising the piece they chose.  It is this element which has provided a rich vein on not just ‘why?’ students made the choice they did, but also what they ‘think’ the assignment and, hence, the assessment and feedback processes are about.

Assessing the ‘summary’ is a standard task in developing the students’ written English (grammar and punctuation, ensuring expression reflects the points intended), aiding accuracy and integrity by clarifying what the extract was saying, and highlighting where students misread or misunderstood any study guidance (e.g. simple things such as forgetting to include ‘word counts’).  The self-reflection, by comparison, allows for far greater ‘conversation’ between the student and myself with regards to their learning goals and their awareness of what underlying skills they should focus on, and how they should do that.

Referencing extract ‘choice’, the most common reason provided is that of interest – students will choose the piece they are attuned to in terms of subject matter (babies, marriage, homelessness, rationalism).  The second most common reasoning is ability, especially in terms of what has ‘just been studied’.  That is, the anthropology extract is popular because the previous week’s work was on anthropology and kinship.  Some students see the other extracts as containing more ‘risks’, being on subjects not yet covered by the course.  Style (or ease of reading / readability) then follows – there is perceived benefit in going for the piece which is easiest to ‘understand’.  And the next one is what I like to call negative theology.  If theology is about getting to know God and what God wants, then negative theology is about discovering what God does not want, hence, what should be avoided – the process of elimination.  One student stated that he found all the pieces “boring” and had no “interest” in any of them, however, he found the one on babies the least interesting and most boring, and knew from the start he would not do that one.

Having discussed choice, many students continue their reflection by offering an underlying incentive to their method (of choice).  This can be summed up by one student statement: “I wanted to choose the piece I would have the best chance of making a good job of”.  Similar statements have included: “I felt I could handle this extract more than the others and achieve a better result“.  Such positions are repeated often, yet it should be clear to students (and readers) that there is no consequent grading.  The sense of doing the assignment is that ‘one should always do ones best work’, specifically thinking in terms of the ‘outcome’ – what the submission, as opposed to the process, achieves!

In conclusion, many students continue to associate learning and education with grading – the status and ‘marks’, potential positive feedback and praise, which is attached to their product.  What this leaves to one side is the process the assignment involves and the alternative ways in which students can or could think when no grading is entailed.  Occasionally, there are one or two students who latch on to the potential and benefits of doing something “more challenging” and of “testing myself” especially as work is not being graded. However, such cases are rare – few and far between.  For the majority, despite the contemporary (positive reinforcement) approach taken by course designers, teachers and markers, their education remains steeped in ‘banking model’ (Freire) conceptions of learning – the aim of doing an assignment is to “do well”, meaning achieve a good or high ‘grade’, even when grading is not being undertaken.  And this aim appears to take primacy over all the other actual (via action) benefits of education: self-exploration, learning to learn, testing and challenging oneself, posing questions, and seeking ‘critical’ conversations (with tutors).  Course designers can reconstruct their curricula, course content, and assignment goals, but that doesn’t change the underlying social meanings students hold or carry (from wider society) when coming back into education.