Welcome to Holistic Assessments!  

Alyson Huff and I started this website after spending over 6 years implementing what we think is a unique approach to alternative grading: Holistic Assessments.  We attended and presented at workshops and conferences on “ungrading” and alternative grading, and we encountered a wide array of ways to jettison points.  There are indeed quite a few methods for assessing learning and assigning grades, but none of the alternatives seemed to fit our approach.  Or, the proposed alternatives seemed rooted in outdated pedagogical methods, prone to recreating many of the same problems with using points. So, given the current conversation around alternative grading – as well as the much larger context of learning-centered teaching practices – we thought it time to put holistic assessments out there for the world to read about. Hence this website.  

We hope you enjoy, and we welcome constructive input, questions, or concerns through the comments! 

To start the conversation, what is holistic assessments?  First, technically, we prefer to call this method of assessing learning and assigning grades by a somewhat longer name, “holistic assessments and narrative feedback.”  With that in mind, Holistic Assessment is a grading practice that uses qualitative evaluative criteria and narrative feedback – and not points – to describe and assess student progress towards proficiency with course learning outcomes. What we mean by learning outcomes will require unpacking; for now, we just mean the overall, big-picture – holistic – learning goals of the course.  The learning outcomes of a course are what a student should practice, learn, and acquire; everything else in the course is, more-or-less, a means to an end.  

After completing an in-depth, semester-long institute on learner-centered teaching (LCT), and in the midst of a course redesign project implementing LCT principles, Alyson came to the realization that, if you build a course around learning outcomes, and you intentionally design opportunities for practice, feedback, and assessment all focused on those big-picture learning outcomes, then you also should assess achievement of those outcomes.  Achievement of holistically defined learning outcomes, thus, is the goal of holistic assessments.  From there, it is (we think) a relatively straight-forward step to base student grades on the degree to which students have demonstrated proficiency with the course learning outcomes. Grades, under this model, are not about jumping through hoops, amassing points, or in any way gaming any type of system. By the end of the semester, students have demonstrated some level of proficiency with the course learning outcomes: that level of proficiency is their grade.  

When evaluating learning (or, really, evaluating anything) holistically, it makes little sense to base that evaluation on an accumulation of points.  For example, a learning outcome of my English Composition course is the ability to leverage research within written arguments. I can’t simply assign a numerical value to a student’s abilities without also defining every single number in the numerical range I use.  I might say, “Your work demonstrates a 7/10 skill with leveraging research within written arguments.”  Many students will simply accept that “7” as “passing” and move on; when points are present, many students simply ignore any and all painstakingly written feedback^[1].  A more astute or grade-motivated student might reply by asking, “Why did I lose 3 points?”  Now, I need to do two things: 1) I need to defend why I deducted 3 points from this student’s grade, and 2) I also need to explain what the student did right to merit those 7 points.  I have added a task for myself – explaining the meaning of the numbers I am using.  

After years and years (and years) of these tedious grade conversations (or, worse, complaints), which nearly all teachers dread, we came to the realization that defending numerical values and justifying points-based grades is just a total waste of time. To provide feedback, the most straight-forward thing to do is to provide feedback – in the form of narrative (written, spoken, etc.) comments.  Without points, students only see the written comments, and they can certainly agree or disagree with those comments as they like, but they must do so by using and practicing the language of evaluation on which their grades are actually based.  Instead of justifying numerical point-values, now we spend our time interpreting and helping students understand their feedback – a much more pleasant and constructive conversation.  In fact, understanding how skills, knowledge, and abilities are actually evaluated in a specific discipline could, itself, be recognized as a fundamental learning outcome in any academic discipline.  

So, how are grades based when using the holistic assessment model?  In short, and to repeat, holistic assessments uses qualitative evaluative criteria to explain what grades mean.  For any method of grading we use, we need to make it clear what the different grade levels mean. Importantly, notice that points do not actually define what an “A” means; it only explains, strategically, how to amass enough points to receive an “A”.  A student who amassed 90% of the points may earn an “A” without demonstrating an “A-level” of skill with one or more course learning outcomes.  That seems problematic at best.  

With holistic assessments, and using the “leveraging research” learning outcome from my course as an example, we might ask, “What does it mean for a student to demonstrate an ‘A’ level of skill with that learning outcome?” Instead of numerical values, holistic assessment uses qualitative evaluative criteria, and these need to be defined by the instructor, preferably with collaboration and input from students.  With “leveraging research,” we might lean towards words or phrases like Skilled, Savvy, Exceptional, Advanced, Skilled, Highly proficient, etc., to describe what it means for a student to leverage research within written arguments at an “A-level”.  The choice of words and phrases to describe and define what an “A” means matters less than ensuring that you and the students understand how they can go about practicing, developing, meeting, and demonstrating the learning outcomes.  For instance, I tried to use “Advanced” to describe the learning outcomes in my English Composition course, but I quickly learned that doing so actually set the bar for earning an “A” grade too high.  My first and second semester students didn’t need to become “Advanced” at academic writing; in fact, they may not become “Advanced” until well into graduate school.  So, I shifted how I describe my evaluative criteria to “Savvy,” which focuses more on the mental habits I hoped to develop in new academic writers.  To determine course letter grades (within institutions that still require letter or number grades) under this assessment approach, I articulate three learning outcomes, and a student must achieve “Savvy” on all three outcomes to earn an “A” in my course.  Demonstrating Savviness with all three outcome is, I think, both necessary and sufficient for awarding an “A” for the course.  Figuring out which words to use and, more importantly, what learning outcomes your course actually seeks to accomplish is a topic for another time.  

Again, the specific words do not matter as much as developing a shared understanding of the evaluative criteria by which student learning will be assessed. Then, using those criteria, holistic assessments bases student grades on the demonstrated achievement of course learning outcomes.  Everything else – attendance, participation, meeting deadlines, etc. – becomes a means to an end.  By focusing squarely on learning outcomes, holistic assessment allows educators to focus their teaching efforts – in both lesson planning, grading, and feedbacking.  Holistic assessment measures the qualities of a course which truly matter: demonstrated achievement of course outcomes.  

Works Cited

Lipnevich, Anastasiya & Smith, Jeffrey. (2008). Response to Assessment Feedback: The Effects of Grades, Praise, and Source of Information. ETS Research Report Series. 2008. 10.1002/j.2333-8504.2008.tb02116.x.

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^[1] See Lipnevich and Smith (2008) for a great discussion on why grades undermine our efforts to provide feedback.