Tue, Feb 25 | 11:00AM–12:30PM | In person | LOYA 201, OR
Wed, Feb 26 | 12:30–2PM | Via Zoom (Link for follow upon registration) 

Facilitated by Katherine Raichle and Andrea Verdan  

Are you overwhelmed by course content and grading? Are your students emphasizing grades over learning? Research shows that students take deeper approaches to learning when they don’t feel overloaded with course content or with a barrage of assignments in a course. With the right design, low-stakes*, minimally graded assignments can lead to a richer learning experience for your students and less grading for you.   

By “low-stakes,” we mean assignments that: 

• are worth only a few percentage points of the final grade (e.g., maximum 10%), or  
• don’t receive a grade in themselves but receive formative feedback. 

As a follow-up to our fall quarter session, this workshop will delve into the process of creating minimally graded assignments that prioritize formative feedback starting early in the quarter. Such feedback can  

• reduce student anxiety,  
• provide meaningful growth-related insights, and  
• create more supportive learning environments.  

Moreover, we know that administering such assignments early in the quarter can set students up for success through the duration of your course.    

Giving students early feedback on their learning is a high-impact educational practice and is soon to become a requirement for all courses, following a vote of the Academic Assembly. This workshop helps you get your course in good shape before that policy is implemented. 

Choose a current or upcoming course you are teaching and bring an assignment that you assign within the first three weeks of the quarter. If you don’t currently have an early assignment, bring the earliest one in your course with a view to breaking it down into “scaffolded” assignments. You will leave the workshop with your own strategies to provide formative feedback and enhance student success.

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