The rise of student-centered teaching, and the science of learning generally, has entirely transformed the landscape of educational work. Unfortunately, our grading practices have not always followed suit. Any progress we make in effective teaching practices will remain stifled unless we also transform the grading practices that, for better or worse, drive student behaviors.1 Alyson and I started this website with the intention of sharing an alternative grading practice, Holistic Assessments, originally developed by my colleague and collaborator, Alyson Huff. We believe holistic assessment is the best available means of assessing student learning and assigning grades.
The goal of this article, however, is not to defend the quality of this practice, but to provide an overview of an important first step of implementing holistic assessments: understanding the vital role learning outcomes play in assessing student learning. In reading various works on u ngrading and alternative forms of assessing learning, it has become apparent that teachers need “how-to” advice more urgently than they need lofty ideals. For instance, Robert Talbert and David Clark at Grading for Growth make an excellent point about the lack of concrete and specific details showing how “ungrading” really works: A start/stop/continue for the ungrading community. How exactly do I put “Ungrading” into practice? Thus, I hope the first few articles on this website will provide some first-person documentation of how Alyson and I have assessed student learning and assigned grades in a point-less, holistically assessed classroom for the last six years (as of 2024).
First, we have to note that holistic assessments is a method for grading. While I (Mark) would personally love to simply do away with grades altogether, most teachers cannot do so, nor would an entire absence of grades necessarily be in the best interests of our students. While this approach aligns closely with many “ungrading” practices – it eliminates the use of points, it prioritizes feedback, and it reflects deeply on student agency and motivation – I would hesitate to call it “ungrading.” So, unlike some ungraded approaches, holistic assessment is not based on student self-evaluations (although these certainly play a strong role), and it does not seek to circumvent or evade the grading process so much as to transform it into something more meaningful. As long as we must assign grades, how can we do so in a way that matches what we have learned from the science of learning and student-centered teaching practices? That is what holistic assessment seeks to accomplish.
What are holistic assessments?
Holistic assessment is an alternative grading practice that uses qualitative evaluative criteria and written feedback – not points – to describe and assess student progress towards proficiency with course learning outcomes. It emphasizes learning over task completion, provides meaningful feedback instead of numerical feedback, and enables progress in learning instead of penalizing mistakes.
So, how does this work? Simply put, you can’t assess student progress towards meeting a learning outcome if you don’t know, first, what learning outcomes refer to and, second, what learning outcomes your course actually seeks to acheive. Thus, to begin, you need to spend substantial time articulating and defining your course learning outcomes.
What are “learning outcomes”?
The phrase, “learning outcome” gets used in a variety of ways in various settings, so it’s important to clarify how we are using the word. In short, learning outcomes refer to the learning results of your course. Learning outcomes are not what happens or what gets done in your class (i.e. tasks, objectives, assignments, or activities); they are also not the same as the course content (i.e. the readings, materials, lectures, videos, books, articles, etc.). Instead, learning outcomes are what students actually learn and retain as a result of engaging with course content through the course objectives.
To put it another way, learning objectives describe what students will do; learning outcomes describe what students will learn by doing. Just because a student did something does not (necessarily) mean they learned something. Thus, we need learning outcomes to express the actual learning students should acheive and demonstrate in a course.
Generally, course content will be referred to with nouns (i.e. Descarte’s Meditations), and objectives will be referred with verbs (I.e. locate the main points Descarte’s Meditations), but learning outcomes will typically employ future tense verbs (i.e. by engaging with Descarte’s Meditation, you will be able to read, understand, and summarize philosophical arguments). Descarte’s Meditations becomes the venue by which students engage with one or more of the holistic learning outcomes of the class. Each teacher might select a different text for the content, and they could employ a range of objectives or activities to engage students in practicting, working with, and progressing towards the learning outcome.
The Importance of Learning Outcomes to Holistic Assessment
Each course I teach has learning outcomes that are prescribed by the state in which I teach (Colorado). Look closely at the course description and learning outcomes from your course syllabus; these matter for transfer and/or articulation agreements. More importantly, learning outcomes matter because they describe or, rather, prescribe what students who take your course should learn. In fact, if a student passes your course, you are – sometimes literally – certifying that students have achieved the specified learning outcomes of that class. So that list of institutional, programmatic, or state-wide learning outcomes provides a decent starting point for identifying your course’s learning outcomes, but this is really just a starting point.
Likely, there is quite a bit of – for lack of a better word – wiggle-room in those learning outcomes. In other words, most – but certainly not all – sets of learning outcomes contain, and sometimes encourage, differences in interpretation regarding exactly what those learning outcomes mean. In my experience, outcomes are written as vaguely and abstractly as possible so that faculty have ample autonomy and academic freedom to design the best possible courses within their respective realms of expertise. Those outcomes also have “wiggle-room” that allows teachers to prioritize some outcomes over others. In my Composition classes, I tend to de-emphasize the grammar and conventions aspect of teaching writing – or at least the heavily prescriptive and culturally homogenous conventions. We all have our favorite stuff, and we all have stuff we ‘have to teach’ but don’t necessarily think is super important, or relevant, or interesting.
Importantly, learning outcomes do not (usually) prescribe the exact means by which those outcomes must be achieved. In other words, state-level learning outcomes dictate the broad, holistic learning (i.e. knowledge, skills, and mental habits) that students should acquire and develop by taking your class, but they don’t tell you how to teach your class. Thus, even though identical courses share the same learning outcomes, in practice every course is different, and every teacher creates a different learning experience for their students. Learning outcomes provide a useful “common denominator” for defining the learning goals of a class, but the rest of the class – how students actually practice, develop, and meet those learning outcomes – varies tremendously from teacher to teacher, class to class, school to school, and state to state.
Having well-defined, clearly-articulated, meaningful, and authentic learning outcomes is essential to implementing holistic assessments. In fact, Alyson first conceived of trying to assess learning holistically while completing a course redesign project that emerged from a semester-long workshop in learner-centered teaching (LCT). A key component of LCT is the practice of backwards designing courses from learning outcomes. She describes her insight perfectly: “Once I started teaching to outcomes, I could no longer assess anything but outcomes.” We have to be fluent in articulating and assessing the outcomes of our classes if we want to assess acheivement of those outcomes.
To be perfectly clear, teaching to outcomes is not teaching to the test (or essay, or project). Tests, essays, and projects are all types of objectives, some of which may help students practice, engage, develop, or enhance their progress towards acheiving class learning outcomes. Test-taking, if used at all, becomes one among many specific means of gauging student progress, but it’s important not to confuse the assessment with the reults. So, yes, holistic assessment uses backwards design, but it backwards designs from learning outcomes, not course objectives. Again, the goal is not performance on any single test, essay, or project (unless, perhaps, one must pass some sort of external certification exam after taking your course); instead, holistic assessment uses tests, essays, and projects (and many other activities) to practice, develop, and provide opportunities for feedback on the holistically defined learning outcomes.
Without articulating the holistic learning outcomes of our classes, we risk recreating many of the problems with points-based grading practices: assignments completed simply for the sake of assignment completion, student grades based on arbitrary measures, unhealthy reliance on extrinsic motivation, etc. The problems with using points to assess learning are reviewed sufficiently elsewhere; for now, what matters is that we need to base our assessment of student learning on the very thing we expect our students to learn: Outcomes.
Finally, we need learning outcomes in order to provide a rationale for the decisions we make in, not only designing and conducting our classes, but also in justifying the grades we give in our courses. What does passing a class mean other than the recognition that a student has satisfactorily demonstrated — in one way or another — their acheivement of the learning outcomes of the class? Learning outcomes provide much-needed clarity, definition, and purpose to every aspect of the teaching process — from course design, to the assessment of learning, and to the determination of final grades.
The importance of learning outcomes really can’t be understated. If you lack well-defined, clearly articulated, holistic learning outcomes, then you may be assessing something, but that “something” doesn’t provide sufficient rationale – let alone guidance – for the types of decisions educators need to make.
See future articles for further guidance on learning outcomes and how to write them.
Footnotes:
- Eric Mazur, “It is actually the assessment that is driving student study habits, not the approach to teaching.” Assessment: The Silent Killer of Learning ↩︎
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