Alternative Grading Pillar: Reattempt Without Penalty

This is an ideal entry point for instructors of large courses that leverage quizzes or exams and traditional points systems. After grading a quiz or exam, identify the problem that the class as a whole struggled with the most. Tell students which problem it was, what you were hoping to see instead, and solicit ideas from students about how they might approach such a problem in the future. Then also communicate that they'll have a similar problem on the next quiz or exam. Their score on the original exam will be replaced with the score on the new quiz/exam.

As an example, most students in a Geology 101 course miss an exam question asking them to describe the relationship between mass wasting and river delta fertility worth 5 points. One student received a 2 of 5 on the questions. On the next quiz, students were asked to relate the fertility of the Ganges to erosion in the Himalayas. The student earned 4 of 5 points on that quiz. 

Note, this will require that you keep track of points at the question level for each student. Many, but not all, instructors do this already, so it may or may not be for you.

This borrows from the two-stage exam (XXX) model. Pick an assignment, preferably challenging, that students complete individually. After they receive their score on it, allow the students to discuss the assignment in groups. Each student completes a fresh copy of the assignment but can discuss the assignment with their group members. Ultimately, they hand in their individual work.

It's typical in alternative grading schemes to handle credit one of a couple ways. The score a student receives is either the greater of the scores they earned or the score of the most recent attempt.

BONUS: To provide a lens on how this activity went while simultaneously providing a reflective opportunity for students, include a question at the end of the second copy: What's something you learned from repeating the assignment with your group?

Work with students to determine the following:

• How many assignments will you allow reattempts on?
• Which assignments are these?
• How many reattempts will you allow on these assignments?

This can overwhelm instructors, but instructors can set limits on these. "As I've mentioned already, this is a new thing I'm trying. I'll provide reattempts on at least one assignment, but if you like the idea, I'm willing to do this with as many as three assignments. Moreover, I'd like to do this with either the reading homeworks or the short papers but not the quizzes or long papers. Lastly, I don't think I can give you more than 3 reattempts, just because I'm one person, not because I don't want to. These are my limits. Given all that, let's talk about what you'd want this to look like..."

One way to start with Reattempts Without Penalty is similar to "Negotiated Reattempts." Here, an instructor chooses one type of assignment in the course and dedicates themselves to providing students multiple reattempts. They commit to a number of reattempts they'll allow. This may depend on the number of the type of assignment that was chosen. Word salad? Here's a concrete example:

A traditional course has:

• 6 guided reading question sheets
• 4 homework assignments
• 2 short papers (2-3 pages each)
• 1 midterm
• 1 final

Thinking about goals and bandwidth, the instructor decides to target either the homework assignments or the short papers. There too many question sheets, and the instructor feels like the midterm and final would both be too long to evaluate a second time. Thinking about the cadence of the semester, it seems that they could realistically provide 2 reattempts (3 attempts total) on the homework assignments, which are mostly multiple choice questions and a few short answer—re-evaluating would go quickly enough—OR to provide only 1 reattempt (2 attempts total) on the short papers, since those will take longer to evaluate.

Pick something you know students struggle with, cognitively, topically, or both, and identify (or develop) an assignment about just that one thing. Examples:

• Math students might struggle to solve second-order or higher differential equations using infinite series.
• GIS students can't communicate to lay audiences what they uncovered from a complicated data set and multi-stage analysis.
• History students studying wars in the 1900s may be derailed by information overload and struggle to contextualize the volume of information.

Provide the assignment that deals with this issue early in the semester, between the one-third and halfway point of the semester. Allow students many (5+) or even unlimited reattempts on just this one assignment. It may help logistically to identify dates students should expect to hand in reattempts and dates students should expect feedback—just to keep the work on track and manageable.

When explaining this assignment and policy, be sure to underscore the difficulty of the task, your faith in students, and desire for them to succeed.