Thanks for this Dave. I’ve been experimenting with my own take on #AbolishGrading but actually having to assign a number to my students at the mid points (two grading periods) and final grade.

It has mostly worked and it is *amazing* some of the work done by students when the barriers are lifted. I also have some great feedback from students that many need more push or carrots (or sticks?) to motivate them. I keep pushing back on this but in an excellent discussion with two students yesterday I found myself coming back to Contract Grading as a possible twist to my system. I explained it to the second student (they all must come talk to me about their final grade) and he seemed genuinely excited. Which of course is more than enough signal to “go for it”.

I originally looked at this a couple years ago on a deep dive that probably started at the Digital Pedagogy site and ended up on Cathy Davidson’s page at hastac. Or was it from a Virtually Connecting session with Cathy that led me to Digital Pedagogy and then back and forth. It is all rather muddy which is to be expected.

I would love to get together a group of educators working on contract grading sometime to have some online sessions to discuss our experiences, practices and plans. Perhaps you would be interested in joining.

Keep doing excellent work Dave. You like so many other colleagues make my classroom a better place with the work that you share.