In this episode, Sharona and Boz are joined by Teresa Focarile, Director of Educational Development at Boise State University, to discuss her first semester implementing an alternative grading system in an Introduction to Theater course. Teresa shares how moving away from weighted averages toward a blend of specifications and mastery-based grading transformed not only the clarity of her course, but also the way students engaged with learning itself. Through transparent grade pathways, co-created rubrics, opportunities for revision, and clearly articulated learning levels like “informed audience member” and “theater artist,” students reported feeling more empowered, less anxious, and more focused on genuine learning rather than point accumulation. The conversation explores everything from the challenges of tracking systems and feedback loops to the realities of implementing alternative grading as an adjunct faculty member, while also highlighting how arts education naturally raises important questions about what grades should actually communicate. Throughout the episode, a central theme emerges: when grading systems become more transparent and human-centered, students are more likely to see the classroom as a place designed to support learning rather than simply sort performance.

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!

• Intro to Theater Syllabus, by Teresa Focarile

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

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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.

149 - teresa-focarile

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Teresa Focarile: I thought it would be confusing to the students, but it didn't seem to be, and I did ask them, on the last day of class, I do a little activity where I get some feedback from them, and asked if there were things that they would change about the course, and asked them specifically about how they felt about the grading, and everyone felt, they told me to keep it.

I said, "This is the first semester I'm doing it. What did you think?" They all said that they appreciated the transparency. They could make decisions about how they spent their time and where they put their effort. And one thing I haven't mentioned yet, but I know you will appreciate, is that the other thing that I talked about as part of this was that this was really about them as learners. That I wanted to foster their learning, and they really felt that. So it worked really well.

Boz: Welcome to The Grading Podcast, where we'll take a critical lens to the methods of assessing students' learning, from traditional grading to alternative methods of grading. We'll look at how grades impact our classrooms and our students' success. I'm Robert Bosley, a high school math teacher, instructional coach, intervention specialist, and instructional designer in the Los Angeles Unified School District and with Cal State LA.

Sharona: And I'm Sharona Krinsky, a math instructor at Cal State Los Angeles, faculty coach, and instructional designer. Whether you work in higher ed or K-12, whatever your discipline is, whether you are a teacher, a coach, or an administrator, this podcast is for you. Each week, you will get the practical, detailed information you need to be able to actually implement effective grading practices in your class and at your institution.

Boz: Hello, and welcome back to The Grading Podcast. I'm Robert Bosley, one of your two co-hosts, and with me, as always, Sharona Krinsky. How you doing today, Sharona?

Sharona: I am feeling good. I gave my final exam today, which means I am done for the semester, except a last little bit of grading. And if you've listened to the pod for over a year, you know that our finals are the easiest to grade out of the whole semester, because we don't have to give any feedback, so they go really fast. So I'm in a very good mood, which of course just means that I'm shifting my mindset to theater, because I've got a junior production this week, and we're going into summer camp. That's me. How about you?

Boz: Not nearly as good as you, 'cause you might have had your last day. I still have almost a month before my semester ends, so little jealous.

Sharona: Right now. My heart bleeds for you. My heart bleeds for you. It so does not.

Boz: But I am excited, 'cause we are not here alone in the virtual studio. So who do we have with us today, Sharona?

Sharona: I'm really glad to welcome to the pod Teresa Focarile. She is the Director of Educational Development at Boise State's Center for Teaching and Learning. And her scholarly work has focused on how educational developers can support institutional efforts such as program assessment and concurrent enrollment, as well as designing programs for adjunct faculty. As an adjunct faculty member myself, that's near and dear to my heart. At the center, she supports a variety of both center and university-wide efforts. They include a course design institute, the Great Ideas for Teaching and Learning Symposium, and program assessment reporting. She's been teaching at the college for 21 years, the past 15 for Boise State, and previous to that she did six years at the University of Connecticut.

Another thing that's near and dear to my heart, she's currently a member of the CORE committee, which is what they call the board of directors, for the POD Network, the Professional and Organizational Development Network, which is the largest member organization for educational developers in North America, and whose conference I believe we just submitted some proposals to. Yes. So hopefully, it'll be my first time at POD but we have other members of the center that have gone there before. So welcome, Teresa, to the podcast.

Teresa Focarile: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me, and I'm so excited about your, whatever your proposal was for the conference. I'm sure it'll be great.

Sharona: Drew worked on it, I know he and I talked about it, but at the moment I literally could not tell you what it was.

Boz: So yeah, definitely want to welcome you, Teresa. But one of the things before we get too far into this that we always like to do with our new guest is ask just how did you get involved in this crazy world of alternative grading?

Sharona: Oh, sure. Can you just tell me what discipline this was

Teresa Focarile: in? Oh, yes. Because your intro- Yes ... was

Sharona: entirely about the center, so I just thought- Yes, of course ... throw that in. What discipline are we talking about? Yes.

Teresa Focarile: I teach in theater. I have a background in theater undergraduate and master's degrees in theater, and so I started teaching Introduction to Theater at the University of Connecticut, Torrington, and a couple of other theater courses there. And here at Boise State, I've taught a variety of courses, but currently teach Introduction to Theater for non-majors, first semester freshmen. I love them- ... so much.

Boz: So something else that's near and dear to your heart, Sharona.

Sharona: Yeah, so Teresa, I don't know if you know this, but I'm literally putting my younger son on a plane tomorrow. He is moving to New York City- Oh ... to try to make it to Broadway, and he just signed with an agent today. So it's been- That's amazing ... an amazing week for us. That's great news. But yeah. That's great. Yes. I'm really even more excited to talk to you now.

So for the last few years I had been playing around with the grading. I had been introduced to the idea of a one-point rubric from my colleague here, Serena Morales, which is really just the kind of did you meet the criteria? You exceeded it. You didn't quite meet it. So it's on the way to alternative grading. But last year was the first year that I intentionally tried out what I think is probably some kind of combination of specifications and mastery-based grading. There's quite a few faculty here at Boise State that use specifications grading, and my colleague in the CTL, Megan Frary, has been using it for a while. And so she helped consult with me to turn my course into one that is intentionally using an alternative grading approach

Sharona: I love it. But I have a question about that though, because I remember from when I took arts classes in college, mine were mostly dance. But I did take theater in high school as well. I didn't have weighted averages in most of my arts classes. That just ... I don't remember there being points and percentages. I also was in band for many years in high school, and definitely did not worry about points and percentages. So did you have any of that experience when you were a student going through, or were all of your theater classes graded with weighted averages, or was it this intro to theater class? Like, how did that work for you?

Teresa Focarile: In terms of teaching them, or in my past life?

Sharona: No, in terms of being a student.

Teresa Focarile: Yeah. That was so recently that I remember it exactly. No, I don't. I ... That's a great question. I honestly don't remember how the courses were graded. I do remember my theater history course was probably the one that had more tests and then the other ones being much more project-based. I think it, they were probably project-based with some kind of grading, but either numerical or weighting attached to it in some way. The courses that I started teaching in theater, because they were mostly intro to theater and so were built more on this idea of factual, can students remember certain factual things and can they write about Shakespeare or write about a play, those were a little bit less subjective than probably when you were, if, studying acting or dance or something like that, which would be a bit harder to put a point on probably.

Sharona: 'Cause that's definitely one of the things when I started to get into alternative grading that I had as a model in my head, is remembering that some of my favorite classes, which were either band or dance or theater the grade was never the ... I never worried about it. I never thought about it, right? It was just being in there and having the experience. So it, I've wanted to create that in my own classes, which, in mathematics, is much more difficult to do.

Teresa Focarile: Yes, I can imagine. There are many times where I am grateful for the fact that I teach theater, that it gives me probably more leeway to do some things. But I think also what you're, the kind of essence of what you're getting at was one of the reasons that I was interested, because I've felt for a long time that there is no reason why anyone should fail intro to theater, right? Not that I'm, giving away A's or not making it that students are living up to the learning outcomes, but it just, It feels like a course that people should be able to experience and understand a new perspective about an art, and that it should never feel like something I have to worry about if I'm gonna pass Intro to Theater. So maybe there was a lingering piece of what you're talking about from my educational experience.

Boz: So first I wanna say how excited I am having you on, because even though we've been doing this for a while, Sharona, we've not had a lot of performing art instructors on here. And even though I know you, you do a lot of work now with the Centers for Teaching and Learning and all of the other things that you do, the fact that you've got this theater background is I'm really excited to have you on. But as you were talking about that Intro to Theater class and comparing it to what you experienced, Sharona, I was going back and thinking of my art appreciation and my music appreciation classes that I took as, thousand-level GE courses when I was going through my college career, and they very much were traditional graded. And it always sat funny with me. I'm like I learned real quickly, good or bad, but I learned real quickly, especially in my music appreciation, not to write what I thought about the music, to write what I thought the professor wanted to hear about the music. Because, yeah, I was still, like, how do you say what I get out of music or what I get out of art is right or wrong? How do you put a percentage- ... on that? And if I don't have, this great appreciation of, Mozart or the classics, some of the classics like that, how is that right or wrong?

Teresa Focarile: Yeah, and that's a big thing. So again, maybe Sharona, you're helping me uncover things I hadn't really thought about in terms of how I'm approaching grading. But that's certainly something I talk about with my students a lot, that I... One of the assignments they do is they see a production, and they write a review of the production using vocabulary that we talk about in the course, and I tell them that it, this is not about whether I agree with their opinion or not, but whether they're using the vocabulary appropriately. So I wish that had happened for you, Boz. That it was more about can you, are you using the vocabulary of musical analysis appropriately, and then whether or not the conclusion you've reached is the same as the instructor's is not the point

Sharona: Just an interesting little aside into my personal theater experience, one of my titles at the company that I work at is artistic director. The board has officially bestowed me with this title that is considered the most senior artistic position in a theater company. And I can see a production and tell you whether or not I like it. I'm very good at that. I can even probably tell you little bits of why I do or not like it. I do not have that vocabulary. I have some of it. I don't have all of it, and so my son, the one who's going off to Broadway, has made a self-study of all of this, 'cause he hasn't actually taken a lot of formal classes in a school setting. He's taken a lot of classes outside, and he's able to explain to me why I do or do not like something from an artistic perspective. Because I'm like this is what bothered me," and he said this is the reason that bothered you." And when he says that, I'm like, "Yes, that's the reason." Yeah. So I'd like to know more about what it is in the course and how... You said you use a mix-up of specification and you said mastery. I'm gonna guess you mean mastery of the learning outcomes. Can you tell us a little bit more about what you landed on and how it's gone for you?

Teresa Focarile: Yes. So what I landed on is a... I would say the first thing that this process made me do... Let me say, I should first say a little bit more about the reasons why I decided to go this direction because I think that will help give the context for that. So the other things there were a couple of other reasons why I wanted to try this. One is, as much as I would talk to students about how much I'm there to support them and explain the weighted grading system I had before inevitably I would have two or three students at the end of the semester who would just disappear and not submit the final exam or the final project, and I'd have to fail them. And I felt terrible about that, partly 'cause I don't, that didn't seem appropriate given all of the work that they had done up until that point, and because I felt like it wasn't clear to them that would be the ramification of not submitting one thing. So one of my goals was transparency. On the second day of class, we went over, here are the expectations for the class. Here are the things that you'll be turning in.

And that connects to the other reason, which was I understand that I'm teaching a general education course. I rarely have students who are actually theater majors in the class, so they're people who are interested in theater maybe or just people who ended up in the class because... so I totally understand that my class might not be their top priority, and I wanted to make it clear to them if they were- Interested or they were trying to make decisions. Here's what... If you just need a C in this class, then this is what you do to get the C, and this is what you do to get the A. And what was great about that for me is that it made me really break down my learning outcomes so that I was really clear with myself, and then with them about what a C and an A meant in the class.

And so that kind of now gets back to your original question, which was, So I think the mastery aspect comes in there, right? So I've set a base level base level set of learning outcomes that align with the course. It has multiple sections, so it aligns with the basic learning outcomes there. It aligns with our general education curriculum. Students, have a basic understanding of what theater jobs are, understand how theater has talked about the human condition over time, these kind of basic understanding things. And then I was able to write some higher learning outcomes around can they actually really interpret artistic decisions? Can they really speak to how what theater's role in, in society are? And so the first thing that was just really helpful was helping to articulate for myself and then for the students what does it look like, what are you able to do at an A level, and then what does a C level look like and then help them see how they would get to one of those three places, hopefully, A, B, or C in the class.

Sharona: And so if that was the goal and everything how does it work? Can we get- Yes ... into a little bit of the mechanics? Like-

Teresa Focarile: Yes. So that's how it works. So we defined A, B, and C. And then I think this is where the specifications part comes in. And if it's helpful, I have some documentation or explanation. I can share my syllabus, those kinds of things. So to get an A the students have to have a minimum of 80% on all of their kind of pre-knowledge checks, so that's the place where they're demonstrating their knowledge of basic theater facts and jobs and roles and things. So there's an aspect there. There's that they're joining the class and participating, so I did integrate the attendance in that, but it's I use a lot of active learning, which I know you all do as well from listening to the podcast. So there's a lot of learning that happens in there. And then we defined together what achievement levels would look like on the two major assignments, which is the production review and a season brochure that they do. So they are either an informed audience member, which means they've met the minimum requirements for that, or they are a theater artist, which means they've reached this kind of higher level of outcomes. And then they're ... So then that's where, the buckets come from there.

Boz: When you said, "We decide," are you referring to you and your students? Is this something that you go through with your students each semester to define what those learning outcome expectations are?

Teresa Focarile: For the past few years, even before I was doing officially alternative assessment, the rubrics for those two main assignments, the production review and the season brochure, I co-created with the students. And so I did that again this year, but we just used the language that we had been using now for the for this grading approach that I've been using. So what would it mean to be a theater artist? If someone was going to demonstrate this higher level learning outcome, what would that look like versus something where it would just meet the basic expectations?

Sharona: So looking a little bit at the syllabus, which I have in front of me and what you just said, you basically have four categories. One is these pre-knowledge checks, one is these in-class stuff. And then there's the production review and the season brochure, and then you also have something called an end of class reflection.

Teresa Focarile: Yes.

Sharona: So those are all the things that they have to complete at- ... different levels. And in order to get an A or a B or a C, they have to meet the require- all the requirements for that grade. Correct. If they met all the C requirements, they'd get a C. If two of them were actually up higher, they still would get the C, or they might get a in between?

Teresa Focarile: They would get probably a B minus. Okay ... and I will say, so again, this was, last fall was the first semester that I did this, and it didn't fall as neatly into the boxes as I had hoped that it might. And again, having now listened to many episodes of your podcast, I'm glad to know I wasn't alone, that the first time I tried this, it didn't work out exactly as I had hoped. There were certainly students who did fit neatly into those boxes, and then I had a chunk that didn't, so I had to go back and then really look at their work and kind of analyze where did I feel like they fell on that outcome. And then I tried to just be consistent amongst those, like the people who didn't fit in the box, was I making decisions based on the same criteria for those people? So I've made some changes to how I'm gonna approach it for this coming fall to see if I can help.

Sharona: So just to reiterate, every syllabus should have a clause that says, "This table guarantees you this grade-" Oh ... but I might increase it higher if I- Yeah ... always reserve the right to raise a grade. That's great. Not to lower it. Yeah. Not to lower it, but always reserve the right to raise a grade. Great. I think that's a super important thing, which I know Boz always ends on that one.

Boz: Oh, yeah. Almost any kind of training we do our last few slides before questions are last bits of advice, and that's always one of them. A, anyone that's been teaching for, more than a few minutes can tell you the students are going to end up doing something you don't expect them to do. Oh, no, there's no way that the student can do A, B, and C and not get D, or, you know- will be able to get D without being able to get A, B, and C first.

And yes, there's always gonna be someone that ends up doing that. So having that kind of flexibility is one of our biggest advices we always give.

Sharona: And sometimes you find out the reason for it really late in the semester. I literally found out last week, which is week 15, the last week of my semester, I have a student who basically didn't attend class, got really high grades on the exams- finally started coming and taking some of my checkpoints. And I'm like, "Okay, he clearly knows the math." Turns out last semester he took the subsequent course, like the one that this is a prerequisite for- Wow ... he took last semester, but he was supposed to have taken this class last summer and he didn't do it. And rather than someone consulting with an advisor and saying, "Hey, you don't need the prerequisite class 'cause you already passed the post one," they told him to come into this class. And I'm like- ... "Okay, if I'd known that 15 weeks ago I would've told you to test out of this class and go into calculus." But he had a good time. He feels really confident now. That's great. But I'm like, he does not meet my boxes because- ... my boxes are really designed to support students who are really struggling. So it's like- ... you're really supposed to come to class and you're really supposed to take all these checkpoint quizzes. I'm supposed to be able to check everything twice, but the guy's waltzing in and taking in-person timed assessment exams cold I can see he's not cheating 'cause he's literally sitting in front of me. I'm like, "Yeah, I don't need you to do this twice,"

...

Sharona: but yeah, th- all kinds of weird things happen. Yeah. And I'm like it ... Literally, I'm like, "Oh my God, you took the next course last semester." I'm like, "I don't even know what to say to you. It's week 15. Yes, you're gonna get an A." ...

Boz: He didn't just take- That's amazing, anyway ... the next course. He took and passed the next course.

Sharona: Yeah, he took it- and passed the next ... I wasn't ... Yeah, you are correct. Very true. And it's a course that's in a sequence, which means that it's a prerequisite because in theory you need the knowledge from one to go to the next. But he had the knowledge in mind. That's why ... Anyway.

Teresa Focarile: Yeah.

Sharona: Yes, please reserve the right to re-grade-

Teresa Focarile: Yeah, I'm gonna write that down- that one when you miss it ... and put it in my syllabus the moment we get off this conversation. Yeah.

Sharona: Okay, so next question then is how did it go? This is what you designed.

Teresa Focarile: Yes. So I would have to say overall it went really well. I I thought it would be confusing to the students, but it didn't seem to be, and I did ask them the- on the last day of class, I do a little activity where I get some feedback from them, and asked if there were things that they would change about the course, and asked them specifically about how they felt about the grading, and everyone felt like they, they told me to keep it. I said, "This is the first semester I'm doing it. What did you think?" They all said that it really was very ... They appreciated the transparency. They could make decisions about how they spent their time and where they put their effort. And I ... One thing I haven't mentioned yet, but I know you will appreciate, is that the other thing that I talked about as part of this was that this was really about them as learners, right? That I wanted to foster their learning, and they really felt that.

So it worked really well for the most part. A couple of people that it didn't fit in boxes, couple of people who didn't see feedback and didn't resubmit. But on the whole it was great. And the other thing I think the message helped get across is I didn't see a lot of evidence in my final project in the production review of students using AI to do it. And so I'm hopeful, and actually when we co-created the rubric, we had a conversation after they had identified all the things that this assignment should do. I asked them, "Now, could AI do this for you?" And they all agreed no, because it wouldn't have the specific knowledge that it needed to do this successfully. And I didn't really see any evidence of students using AI on that assignment. So I think part of that was hopefully me reiterating with them that this was about me wanting them to achieve these outcomes, and this would be the way that they demonstrated it.

Boz: Okay, so I've got a couple questions, but first I've got a comment, 'cause you said something, that came out of your student surveys, which- I think should actually be a bigger deal. You said that one of the things you asked was about and I forget how you phrased it, but the, are you leaving th- having a more of appreciation for theater or something like that, right? Isn't that the point of GEs in colleges? Isn't that one of the big why me as a mathematician and as a math educator had to take art and music appreciation classes was to get a well-rounded experience and be able to experience something that maybe I had no idea that as a student I would be interested in? I think that's such a g- 'cause I didn't leave my appreciation of music and art class with that. So the fact that your students are, I think is phenomenal, and it's something that's worthy of pointing out and really celebrating, 'cause my understanding, that's one of the big goals of GE classes in college and why we don't just take major, themed classes. So, I think that is phenomenal. But my question, because we don't get a lot of, really early practitioners on the podcast, and the fact that you are so very new to actually doing it in the class, but you had mentioned there's a few things that you wanted to refine or a few things you're going to change for next semester. I'm really curious, like what are one or two of those big changes and why?

Teresa Focarile: Yeah. So one of the things that I'm changing, so as Sharona mentioned, last fall I had the, those two assignments, the production review and the season brochure, one of which is individual and one of which is a group project in the same bucket. And next semester I'm gonna split them up for a variety of reasons, but that was one of the places where it got a little... People didn't always fit, but yet it seemed And also it's a group project versus an individual project, so I'm gonna split those up. The other change that I made, looking at my slides, that I... the other thing actually is that, and I think you all have talked about this too, is I talked about it a lot with students in the class, but I hadn't really clarified for them how they could track it in the learning management system. And so there was some confusion around that. And so students would either email me concerned that it said they were failing or saying, "Oh, I have an A and so I don't have to worry about it." So that's another thing that I need to be clearer about in the fall.

Boz: Yeah, I was about to say, we just record audio, but as we're doing this, we have video on. And this is one of the times I wish we woulda had video. Because Sharona's eyes when you said that almost rolled to the back of her head.

Sharona: And I'm blushing.

Boz: And you're blushing right now. Because why is that, Sharona? Why are you blushing a little bit?

Sharona: Okay. If there is one thing that I know, if there's one thing I know, it's the importance of tracking systems. And if there's one thing that I failed at miserably this semester, it was giving my students a decent tracking system. Oh. I just, I fell apart on that this semester, and it was bad. And I know this because I had to go in the last three weeks and do a lot of the tracking for the 14 students that were remaining, and it was hellacious for me. And if I had just made a paper tracker. I know better. I know better. I know better, and I didn't do it, and I so regret it.

Boz: But yeah it's amazing how something as seemingly simplistic or simple as that is really can make a huge difference in the students' understanding of the grading. 'Cause it, for most of our students, it is often very new. And I'm thrilled that I'm starting to get students in my classes, I will have two or three, maybe four saying yes they've experienced some sort of alternative grading before. But that's still the, minority of the class. And when you look at it, by the time they get to us as GE freshman level classes, they've had 13 to 14 years of schooling. Most of that has been traditional. Yes, a lot of elementaries, at least in California, are doing something that's more less traditional, but-

Sharona: And I'm just gonna put a pitch out there, and this might surprise Bosley, 'cause I don't think I've ever said this way before. I think I have decided that I have to have a paper-based tracker in every class. We've always talked about tracking systems. I have been sold on the idea of it being on paper. Because all of the digital systems have all these clickable links, and so you'll be looking at one thing and you'll click into it and you'll go looking and you'll go down a rabbit hole for one thing, but then getting back to that view with all of them is really hard. So if you have a paper tracker and you're, like, highlighting, "Okay, these are the ones I know I need to revise." So I really think that I'm gonna emphasize heavily paper trackers.

Teresa Focarile: And that your students would be, like each of them would have a tracker that they were using. Yeah.

Sharona: So basically I'll hand out... and then we do this in our stats course, but I will hand out a paper tracker at the beginning of the semester that lists whatever the tracking is, and teach them how to fill it out as we go.

Boz: And then how to use that tracker to actually calculate their grade so they have an idea of where they are at any point during the semester.

Sharona: It very much depends on the style of what you're doing. So I'm thinking of it in terms of my class where I do a lot of standards-based. So I'll have anywhere from 15 to 30 learning outcomes that they're tracking, and so those fit really well into rows on a spreadsheet kind of thing. I think like my History of Math class, which had four projects, but even then I had turn 10 learning outcomes that they should've been checking, so I don't know. It depends on the course, but I, for myself, am probably gonna rely much more heavily on paper because the digital tools, as great as they are, and as much as our students are resistant to paper, sometimes you just gotta be able to pull something out that you can mark and erase and-

Boz: The other difference, the other thing that, and I think you really saw this semester, Sharona, the way a digital, regardless if it's a LMS grade book or any other kind of tracker, might look one way on a computer, a different way on like a Chromebook- a different way on a tablet, and a very different way on the phone. So- ... and I think that was one of the issues that you came across this semester, Sharona, is so many people were accessing it either through phones or tablets, and it just looks so different.

Sharona: And I was really relying heavily on the Canvas Learning Mastery Grade Book which we could have a whole different conversation about failing to download your grade books right before Canvas goes down- but before finals. That was a fun experience. But that Learning Mastery Grade Book is actually not available at all on the phone or the tablet. It is available on the browser view of the tablet, and you can fudge your way in on the browser view on the phone, but it's not actually in the app for either tablet or phone. And so I'm telling them, "Go to the Learning Mastery Grade Book," and they're pulling their phones out and going, "I don't know what you're talking..." I don't know if you little diversion there, but when you said tracking, I was like, "Oh, God." Oh, I'm feeling seen. And I've only been doing tracking for 10 years, so you know.

Teresa Focarile: See, I don't feel so bad then that I didn't get it right the first time either. No. No.

Sharona: I think it's worse when you have learned how to get it right and then screw it up. It's like I regressed.

Teresa Focarile: If I keep up with this long enough, I'm sure that'll happen to me too, and then I'll tell you so you feel better about that too.

Sharona: But I wanna go back to a couple of other things. So you said your students felt that they got the appreciation. Did you see a difference day-to-day in the classroom experience of how they were engaging with the material, or was that pretty similar to prior experiences?

Teresa Focarile: I think it was similar, mostly similar. And I would say mostly similar because of just the approach. I didn't really change anything else about my approach to teaching in the class, and building community in the class, and communicating my support of students in the class. I had a lot of that already. My other goal in switching to this alternative assessment is to try to alleviate student anxiety around grades, so again, going into that transparency. And so there maybe a, have been a little bit of that.

The other thing, another reason why I switched is I wanted to make really transparently clear that students could resubmit something if they hadn't done it to the highest level before. Because that was something I was inviting of students in my previous processes, but it was and I probably said it in class, but it wasn't an explicit part of the, how the class worked. And so I would u- unevenly have students take advantage of my saying, "Hey, but if you wanna fix this thing and resubmit." And so that just felt inequitable to me, that I wasn't as transparent or as it could have been. And, I did find that students took advantage of that opportunity to resubmit and demonstrate that they met the outcomes on a much higher percentage than they had in, past iterations of the course.

Boz: Bringing up equity before doing this you said you had, different levels of people taking advantage of that revision. Were there groups or categories or characteristics of common characters of the students that did take advantage and the ones that didn't take advantage?

Teresa Focarile: I haven't done an analysis of that to really know. So yeah, I don't know. It would be interesting to see, to look at some demographic data or demographic of all different kinds of data and see if I could tell that from the past. But my sense was, either did all the students know that was a thing that they could potentially ask for, or did all the students have that built into their- timing, so now I, with that intentional, I had to make the due dates a little earlier than I might have before to give students time, and then I was really clear about you have to turn it in on this date because I need time to give you feedback so that you can resubmit it. Yeah, I don't know. That's would be a good thing to look into.

Boz: 'Cause I know and I've not done any kind of statistical analysis on this, so this is just anecdotal, but I know in my, especially in my high school classes 'cause I teach both at the high school and at the higher ed level. But especially in my high school classes, that mid D to high C range students- . They wouldn't do the revisions. Like, when I would give test corrections or things like that when I was doing traditional grading, didn't take advantage of that as much as, my student that had the 95% on the test and just wanted that last- 5% or as much of it as they could. And I would honestly look at them and going, "Y- are you serious? You're redoing this for five points?" But yeah, it was that student would take advantage of it all the time, and that kind of- ... mid-range to just over, just under passing did not take advantage of it very much at all, which was who I was really hoping would. Once I changed to, truly alternative grading, and once the students believed me that the revisions mattered, 'cause that does take a couple of, really with my high school students it would usually October, November before they really were believing what I was saying about my revisions. But once I did that, yeah, that mid-range student that I was wanting to, the most to do the revisions started doing them a whole lot more when they saw how it, the grading was different and it wasn't just a test correction. It was, "No, you didn't get proficient on this. You have two choices. You can either retake it, or you can do, some revisions and resubmit and learn from the mistakes you made rather than just trying to do another similar type of assessment." They really did. They started taking advantage of it a whole lot more.

Teresa Focarile: Yeah, I definitely had that experience of the students who were already doing well doing it. I think it goes back to the transparency piece again because now I might say, "Okay, on this assignment you've reached this level, which is, equal to the B level, the informed audience member. And just so you know it's here's a couple things that you could do to get it up to the next Level, and then I just feel like that's giving the students a more informed choice between so this is 15% of the doing the math on all of that. So hopefully it's making it clear about what they've demonstrated to me and what they need to do to potentially move up.

Sharona: And one of the things I'm enjoying hearing you talk about is you have these two success levels, right? Informed audience member and theater artist, and it's clear to me that it's clear to you what the distinction is. I don't feel like I have that in the types of math classes I have. Yeah. You either have basically gotten the problem right or you haven't, and yes, you can say, okay, arithmetic mistakes or whatever, but usually it's more than just that. So I kind of- ... envy the fact that you truly have a good to great distinction level in the work the students are doing, because I think it might be fun to do that, but it's just not something that I do or can do with the type of computation-based.

Teresa Focarile: See, now the educational developer in me is kicking in and I wanna ask you all kinds of questions about- how we could get there for you.

Sharona: I have actually an answer to that, which is if I were allowed to properly redesign my course- Ah ... to be the course it should be, which would be application problems with authentic assessment components and all kinds of things then I could do it. I just unfortunately have some institutional and departmental constraints- that are not allowing me to do that at this time. Yeah. So given that I am working in a world with all closed and inauthentic problems- I can't... I cannot justify good to great, so instead I- Yeah ... just do quantity. So if you want- ... an A, you gotta get more of it done correctly than a B. So I'm okay with it, but yeah, no I do actually know how to do it, I just don't usually have a full institutional context to be able to do it. Yeah. So I, that's one battle I have not tried to fight, 'cause I'm good with just more. I'm okay with it. I'm like, "You want an A in my class, you gotta get 90% of the learning outcomes, show me you can do them." B, 80% of the learning outcomes. And it's not actually 90/80, but there's levels- Yeah ... basically. This many. It's not actually 90- Yeah ... 80/70 anymore.

Teresa Focarile: But- But I would say that's what I'm doing in that, to get a, to C you've demonstrated that you can do all these basic things. A B is you've, you are able to make more in-depth observations. A, you're, like, really making some connections around theme and meaning, not just what were the artistic choices, but what are we supposed to feel about those artistic choices. So you could just add a clever mathematician related title to those two grades and you'd be right there.

Sharona: That makes total sense. So what were the favorite things that came out of this experiment for you? What were, like, the one or two best things that came out?

Teresa Focarile: The... one was for me the being much clearer with myself about the learning outcomes and and what an A meant. Because that, again, another reason that I wanted to do this is that I have historically had a lot of students get an A in my class, not because I am not rigorous, but because I have clear outcomes that I work towards getting students to achieve them. But I felt like I still needed some more justification of what it meant to get an A in the class and that students could really do. And so for me, really thinking that through, being really clear with students about it, and then feeling more confident that I can back up my statement that these students met an outcome that deserves an A in the class was really helpful. So that was really helpful for me. I think my sense from that one semester is that the students really felt like they learned and felt like they were in a classroom that was focused on them learning, and so that was a big win, I think.

Sharona: Okay, so one thing you didn't like. Anything that really you're like, "Wow, that..." We talked about the tracking, but that was not pleasant, or that was not... Did you overwhelm yourself with grading at one point? Did you make any of those sort of big beginner newbie mistakes- ... that we often hear about? The, "But for the fact that this was enjoyable, I hate myself right now."

Teresa Focarile: Yeah. I I wouldn't say hate myself, but, so that production review assignment so, they see a production and they write a review, and I have 64 students in my class, which is something I probably should've said at the beginning. But 64 students. So 64 rewrites of an assignment that is a, two to four-page written assignment is not nothing. So that was a bit more. And then also I would say the feedback giving then on such detailed feedback on 64 of them that was a commitment, but doable and worth it because then students revise things and showed me that they could do the things that I needed them to do.

Boz: Since you were bringing up and talking about the feedback, 'cause one of the things, and we've talked a lot about this Sharona, in fact, we talked about it some in our last episode What did you do or how did you really get the students to engage in that feedback, really making the feedback loop so the students are, iterating and are growing from their own mistakes? Because even though a lot of us, I've been an educator for 21 years, I've given feedback for 21 years. I have not been doing, alternative grading for 21 years, and how my students interact with feedback is very different now than, say, 15 years ago.

Teresa Focarile: I would imagine my answer might then be p- similar to yours. I almost wanna make you answer the question first before I answer the question. Go for it. Yeah, I'm gonna have you answer the question first. How, why do you think it's different?

Boz: I think it's a couple of reasons. I really do think one of the big reasons is that with my grading, the first thing my students notice isn't the point value, 'cause there's not a point value there. I don't have- ... an 87%- ... or a, seven out of 10, because that would be the first thing they would notice. And when it was traditional grading, it was all about the points, so the feedback didn't have a lot of meaning for them, or at least perceived meaning for them. Whereas I was still spending, this ton of time and, trying to make it useful to them. They were seeing the points, and that was their focus. When I, almost immediately going into alternative grading and, going to rubric scores and things like that, it was, "Okay, I didn't show that I understand enough about, this graphing, the relationships of graphing. What do I need to do?" And the feedback became useful. And then also at the same time, like I mentioned earlier, I had more of my students actually utilizing revisions and resubmissions because it was part of the grade. It was a clear part of the grade that feedback now really had value. Whereas traditional grading, you get a 78 on this one test. Yes, I might have some of those same materials on the next test. Yes, if you did better on it, it would help your grade. But that 78 was still in the calculation. So the students could- ... see that they were still getting that, that punishment from that early mistake. So it was like why? I, it's already done. I'm just gonna keep going." Whereas with the alternative grading, they can see, okay I didn't get it this time. I've got to get this twice before the end of the semester. It makes a lot more sense to try to do it from a starting point that I've already done and gotten some feedback and got a little guidance than trying to do it again. So again- ... the feedback mattered. The feedback gave something that the students valued instead of just me valuing it.

Teresa Focarile: Yeah. I thank you for answering first, 'cause I wasn't sure, but that, I think connects to... so the way that I'm grading the assignment, we'll use the production review, we'll keep talking about that, is, so I'm still using a rubric, but it's very clearly defined for this particular aspect. So one of the things they have to do is talk about a describe a design choice and then how that design choice connected to the theme of the show in their opinion. And informed audience member just means that they're clearly defining the choice. They're using the right vocabulary. They're being really clear about it. The theater artist level is now they're making a real connection about what that choice means in terms of supporting the theme. But on the learning management system, I just click a box 'cause the rubric explains it and the information I gave explains it. So I click a box that says theater artist or informed audience member and give them a little bit of feedback. And so to your point, there's zero points, and they either got all... their grade is the either informed audience or theater artist, depending on how many of those they got checked off. And so then it is about, okay, yes, I can see I was not clear enough about this particular thing. So if I'm clear about that particular thing, then I have reached this level. So I think you're right. It does really there's no points, and there's very clear feedback on what they need to do to improve in a way that's maybe not always as visible in other- ... approaches.

Sharona: It cracks me up because people who have not done any of this work in alternative grading will swear to you that their points-based system is completely clear. And they will build these elaborate scoring guides that says give the students a point for this, a point for this, a point for this, a point for this, and then the student does something completely different than any of those points. And I'm like, I- w- how is the student supposed to know that these were the points you wanted if you didn't explain it ahead of time? Just because I'm working with closed-end problems doesn't mean there aren't multiple approaches. And so it just, now that I've done this work, I agree with you, that transparency, and that I think is partially where my motivation to do alt-grading came from- is because I was introduced to the TILT framework, to the, transparency in learning and teaching framework. And it's all great and fine, and then I started doing the math, and as a mathematician I look at the math and I'm like, "This doesn't make any sense at all." Yeah. This is mind-numbingly unclear mathematically. So one of the talks we often give is grading is the misuse of mathematics in the measurement of student learning, because I literally can show you, as a mathematician, I can show you how your math doesn't make any sense. And so it, it completely obscures everything. And so I, yeah, if I'm gonna wanna learn something I kinda wanna know what it is I'm supposed to demonstrate to show you that I know this thing, whatever it is. So it's just interesting. Interesting.

Teresa Focarile: So I think it probably a lot of the reasons why students would take the feedback and try again is probably connected to what you were saying there about just being clear and not making it about points. Hopefully some of the rest of it was them having made a decision about- what kind of grade they were going for, right? So then it was really clear, are you getting to that level or not? And then also hopefully it's the encouragement about that I know that they can meet that, right? The kind of wise feedback model of saying, "Here are my high expectations and I know you can reach them, and you can just do this. This is the thing that you haven't done yet, and I know you can get there if you do this," and then they do, hopefully.

Sharona: So I have two last questions that, we're coming close to time, but I kinda wanna curve this in a little bit different direction.

Teresa Focarile: Okay. So

Sharona: Bosley, if you don't like this curve you can- you can redirect me. But I wanna curve it over onto your center work.

Teresa Focarile: Okay.

Sharona: So two questions. One is, has this experience changed at all how you might approach some of your overall center work? And second, and we might not have time for both of these, is what about adjuncts attempting to do this?

Teresa Focarile: Yeah.

Sharona: So the, those are two huge topics, and we can go over a little bit if we need to. I don't know, Boz, do you have a preference on those or?

Boz: No. Which one do you, Teresa, find more interesting to answer?

Teresa Focarile: I'll start with the adjunct one since that's how I started, and I'm very aware that, my status as an adjunct faculty member is very safe and I have the freedom to experiment both because of my positionality at the university and because I have great support from my department. So I don't have to worry that if I try a crazy grading scheme and it doesn't work out, that I'm not gonna get rehired. So that's the potential challenge for adjunct faculty trying something like this, as I, I know you all have talked about before, is like what happens when it doesn't go well or students don't fully understand it, and that can affect adjunct faculty course evaluations and then their whether or not their, they get renewed, their contracts get renewed.

The alternative of that though is if places like Centers for Teaching and Learning can help support adjunct faculty in trying some of these, I think it would only help improve their relationships with students, improve their student evaluations and help them demonstrate even more so the value that they're bringing to their institutions. So, it probably just requires, like with all faculty trying new alternative grading, having the right support that CTLs are well-positioned to provide. They're also, usually very underpaid, adjunct faculty, and don't necessarily have the extra grading time or course design time that would be required to integrate something like this. So I think that's potentially where the kind of course model that Sharona, that you work with, whatever its flaws might be the kind of like created course that adjuncts would teach off of, I think that would really help a lot if they were just given the tools to make it happen.

Boz: That's really how Sharona, we got the SLAM program, or the SLAM program, the statistics class using alternative grading with the dozens of adjuncts that we had. It was, you designed it and said, "Hey, I'm gonna do all the hard work. I'm gonna do all the design. I'm gonna put together all this stuff. You just have to teach and grade." And that, that really was. And if that's-- Whether that role is taken up by a course coordinator or by a center for teach, for teaching and learning, that you're right, that is a great way to encourage someone because , no educator has a ton of extra time, but adjuncts in particular don't have you know, often a lot of that time just to sit around and be able to, spend three weeks on trying to redesign a course for some sort of alternative grading and alternative practices.

Teresa Focarile: Yeah. And I guess my answer to the first question about how this has affected my approach to the work, I would actually say it might even be switched and say my work informed my decision to do this because all of the folks on my education- on my team here at the CTL teach, and which we think is a really important thing. If we're all full-time staff but we also all teach, most of us as adjunct faculty. And I feel like that's really important because I don't feel comfortable talking to other faculty about strategies they could use in their class if I'm not also trying them myself. So while I have, introduced people to the concepts of alternative grading, it also feels if this is something I'm gonna ask people to explore, I should probably try it myself and see how it works and really be able to honestly say "Yeah, this part was hard," or, "Here's my own personal experience of why it worked or what didn't work." I think it's more the opposite, that the educational development work informs my teaching choices because I really feel like I have to be trying things before I suggest to people that they should be trying them too.

Sharona: So I'm curious to see if you had the same experience then that I did, which is I call traditional grading a fire blanket smothering the fires of learning. And what you do when you go to alternative grading is you remove the blanket. So now nothing is smothering, but you still have the course and the obstacles and all the things. So for me, the grading change enabled all the other stuff that I was striving to do: the active learning, the flipping, the authentic assessment, all the things that I wanna do. Do you think that made ... did your active learning get any easier, any better, or it just, it was okay before and it just was still okay now?

Teresa Focarile: I think it was mostly okay now. I think the students probably bought into the creation of the rubrics and discussing what it meant, like what they should be able to do on an assignment. I think they bought into that more than they had the couple of years before that. And I just had students talk to me this year in ways that they hadn't before about how they really felt like the course was about their learning, that they felt very much like this was a space where they were coming to learn something and their learning was supported, and that's maybe not something I've heard as much before

Boz: How beautiful is that though? 'Cause, we brought this up in the last couple of episodes when we were talking about all the grade articles and the Harvard stuff, that all this discussion is about grading. Where's the discussion about learning? So, it's-

Teresa Focarile: Yeah.

Boz: Oh ... phenomenal to hear that, that your students are actually coming to you and even saying that this, regardless of anything else, this is a place where I feel I'm here to learn, and I'm, my, that learning is supported. That's, that is absolutely beautiful.

Teresa Focarile: It feels pretty great. It feels pretty great, and if you ever want someone to rant with you on your podcast about the idea of why we should limit there being certain numbers of A's in classes, I'm happy to rant on that.

Sharona: Oh, my God. I think we might just... I, maybe we just wanna do an open call.

Yeah. Boz, we should just do an open call, put it out there to the community. Oh, my God, if we... Oh. Yeah. We just-

Teresa Focarile: But yes the fact that students feel like the classroom is a place to learn is a great outcome, of course, for sure.

Boz: I think that is probably a beautiful note to also end on. Sharona, is there any last-minute thing that you wanted to say?

Sharona: I'm glad to talk to another theater person. I know I come across as a math professor, but I really do a lot of work in theater, that's awesome. Yay, theater. I love it.

Boz: And Teresa, any other last-minute things before we wrap this up that you would like to say or put out?

Teresa Focarile: No, just thank you for the opportunity for this conversation and the work that you do on this podcast. It's a great place to learn from other people's experiences, so thank you.

Boz: Thank you to-

Sharona: I will add, we're gonna put your syllabus in a repository. We have- Great ... syllabi repository at the center, so we will get that posted.

Teresa Focarile: Great.

Boz: All right, and with that, you have been listening to The Grading Podcast with Boz and Sharona, and we'll see you next week.

Sharona: Please share your thoughts and comments about this episode by commenting on this episode's page on our website, www.thegradingpod.com. Or you can share with us publicly on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. If you would like to suggest a future topic for the show or would like to be considered as a potential guest for the show, please use the Contact Us form on our website. The Grading Podcast is created and produced by Robert Bosley and Sharona Krinsky. The full transcript of this episode is available on our website.

Boz: The views expressed here are those of the host and our guest. These views are not necessarily endorsed by the Cal State System or by the Los Angeles Unified School District.