I’ve spent the last few years dismantling my assumptions about grading. I removed points. I minimized instructor judgment. I experimented with self-assessment and declaration grades.
What I learned is this: removing grades is not the same thing as designing for agency.
In my last post, I described ungrading as a clearing. Necessary, but incomplete. I removed judgment, but I didn’t replace it with infrastructure. Students were anxious not because they resisted freedom, but because freedom without structure doesn’t feel like freedom to everyone.
This semester, I’m taking over a course for a colleague who also uses ungrading. As I worked to understand their system, to see the course through the eyes of their students, something unexpected happened. The distance forced me to notice things about my own approach that I’d stopped seeing.
Their syllabus didn’t have weekly quizzes. Mine did.
I told myself those quizzes were about accountability. Ten questions. Same format. Every week. Students would consume the readings, take the quiz, and I’d know they were prepared.
But looking at it from the outside? It was compliance theater. I was still checking up on students. I was still playing the game, just with different pieces.
And worse, my messaging was broken. Students in my previous ungrading courses would tell me things like, “We do all the work, and then at the end we argue for what grade we want and prove it to you.”
Another student said it even more plainly: “We basically see if what we did is okay with you.”
That’s not agency. That’s performance with better lighting.
What I Was Still Getting Wrong
The problem wasn’t just the quizzes. It was what they represented. A fundamental lack of trust.
Even without traditional points, I was still asking students to prove something to me. To perform completion. To demonstrate compliance. This did not align with my Teaching Philosophy, which is at the top of the syllabus and LMS.
I had removed the scoresheet, but I hadn’t replaced it with anything sturdy enough to hold people up. I took away the map without helping them build a compass.
Seeing my colleague’s system from the outside helped me understand what I’d been missing. Structure and trust aren’t opposites.
You can build systems that are both clear and liberating. But it requires designing infrastructure, not just removing obstacles.
The Shift: From Performance to Infrastructure
So this semester, I’m trying something different.
For my Spring courses, I’m moving to a Labor-Based Grading Contract, paired with a Digital Research Archive (learning log) that replaces quizzes, exams, and most traditional assessments. In my colleague’s class, they use a traditional composition book to keep notes. I’m utilizing my work with digital gardens and building your own digital infrastructure to enable students to use the tools they’ll need in their futures.
This is not about being trendy. It’s about building learning environments that make sense in a world where compliance is automated and authorship matters.
Why Points No Longer Work (If They Ever Did)
Points reward optimization, not curiosity. They teach students to play it safe. They turn learning into risk management.
In a points-based system, the rational student asks: ” What do I need to do to get the grade?”
In a labor-based system, the question becomes: ” What kind of learner do I want to be?”
That shift matters. Especially for future educators who will shape the next generation’s relationship with learning.
The Contract: Choosing a Path, Doing the Labor
Instead of averaging scores, students select the grade bundle they want to pursue and commit to the associated labor.
This is not effort theater. Busywork dressed up as engagement. Labor here means visible, sustained engagement with ideas, people, and artifacts.
Bundle C — The Foundation : Consistent participation, completion of core readings and fieldwork, maintenance of a weekly research log. If you do the work, you pass. No shame. No apology. Sometimes this is exactly what we have bandwidth for.
Bundle B — The Engagement Layer : All of the above, plus deeper community participation: two-column research notes that connect theory to practice, peer feedback, collaborative synthesis, multimodal reflections that show thinking over time.
Bundle A — The Capstone Layer : All of the above, plus public-facing scholarship: a publishable ethnography, a professional resource, or a curated portfolio that contributes beyond the class. This is work that matters to someone other than me.
You choose your level of commitment at the start of the semester. You document your labor. The grade follows.
A Note on Naming
The bundle labels are still evolving. Here’s the tension I’m experiencing: I don’t want students fixating on letter grades. But I also need to be transparent about what the registrar will see at the end of the semester. Calling them “C-Bundle,” “B-Bundle,” and “A-Bundle” is pragmatic, but it risks implying hierarchy when what I’m really describing is difference, not deficiency.
These aren’t better-or-worse tiers. They’re different kinds of commitment.
The Foundation bundle (C) isn’t “doing less.” It’s choosing to focus your energy on core competencies. Showing up, thinking critically, and completing essential work. For many students (those juggling jobs, family responsibilities, mental health challenges, or simply other demanding courses), this is exactly the right choice. And critically, if you complete the Foundation bundle, you pass the class, earn credit, and maintain scholarship eligibility. There is no asterisk. No penalty. No shame.
The Engagement bundle (B) adds collaborative and reflective layers. You’re not just consuming ideas, you’re actively synthesizing them, connecting theory to practice, and engaging with peers. This isn’t “more work” in the sense of arbitrary busywork. It’s a different relationship with the material.
The Capstone bundle (A) adds public-facing scholarship. You’re creating something that exists beyond the classroom. A resource another educator might use, a portfolio that demonstrates professional thinking, or a piece of research that contributes to ongoing conversations in the field. You’re creating an infrastructure that will help you now and in the future.
The key distinction is that these aren’t quality tiers. They’re labor tiers.
An A doesn’t mean your ethnography is “better” than a B-Bundle student’s ethnography. It means you chose to also build a professional portfolio and engage in public scholarship through annotation tools. A C-Bundle student who completes their ethnography with depth and insight has done excellent work.
I’m still figuring out how to discuss this without inadvertently reinforcing the very hierarchies I’m trying to dismantle. But for now, I’m trying to stay on message. Choose the bundle that honors your capacity, your goals, and your life. All three are legitimate paths.
Replacing Quizzes with a Research Archive
I no longer ask students to “prove” they read.
Instead, students build a digital research archive throughout the semester. A trail of breadcrumbs they left behind as they worked through the course. I’ve had versions of this in the past: two-column notes, Hypothesis annotations, and field journals. This iteration lives in a shared Google Drive folder. (In the future, I plan to transition to an open-source tool that students can own and manage beyond the course.)
The workflow scales to their chosen bundle:
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Capture
- Foundation : Read. Annotate if it helps you, but you’re not required to submit annotations.
- Engagement/Capstone : Use tools like Hypothesis or Glasp to annotate readings. Highlight what matters to yo u. Not what you think I want to hear, but what genuinely connects to your questions, your community, your practice.
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Curate
- Foundation : Maintain a basic field log or course folder. You’re documenting that you engaged with materials, but the format is yours.
- Engagement/Capstone : Move annotated ideas into your weekly Research Digest. Connect theory to lived experience, classroom observation, or professional practice. Show the connections between what you’re reading and what you’re seeing in the world.
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Create
- All bundles : At the end of the semester, there is no exam. Students synthesize their archive into a final work product. Often, with the help of AI tools like NotebookLM, used transparently as a research partner, not a shortcut.
The archive makes learning visible over time. It rewards persistence, synthesis, and reflection. Things AI can assist with, but not replace.
The difference between bundles isn’t whether you’re thinking deeply. It’s whether you’re making that thinking visible, and in what forms.
The archive makes learning visible over time. It rewards persistence, synthesis, and reflection. All things AI can assist with, but not replace.
What This System Does Differently
It trusts students to choose their own level of engagement. Not everyone needs to go deep every semester. Sometimes survival is success. The Foundation C-Bundle honors that reality.
It makes thinking visible without making it performative. The archive isn’t for me to grade. It’s for students to see their own intellectual growth. I check in periodically to ensure it’s happening, but the work is theirs.
It treats AI as infrastructure, not as cheating. When students use NotebookLM to synthesize their field notes, they’re not hiding their process. They’re documenting it. The AI becomes a research partner, they cite, not a ghost they pretend doesn’t exist.
It replaces judgment with documentation. Individual assignments don’t get points. They get marked as “Satisfactory” (meets the criteria) or “Needs Revision” (opportunity to strengthen your thinking). Students can revise their work until it meets the terms of the rubric, criteria, or contract.
Why This Matters Now
We are transitioning from a world that rewards knowledge to one that rewards sense-making.
In that world:
- Memorization matters less than interpretation
- Compliance matters less than authorship
- Grades matter less than agency
Labor-based grading doesn’t eliminate rigor. It relocates it from judgment to responsibility, from performance to process.
This approach won’t be comfortable for everyone. Some students prefer the clarity of points. Some will feel anxious about choosing their own path. Some institutions still demand traditional grades at the end (and yes, I still have to translate bundles into letters for the registrar).
However, if we want students to act like researchers, educators, and professionals, we must build systems that treat them accordingly.
What I’m Still Learning
I definitely have not fully figured this out. I’m writing this as the semester starts, which means I’m documenting the design, not the reality.
However, I believe my thinking has evolved to identify what I was missing.
For me, Ungrading 1.0 was about removing obstacles. Ungrading 2.0 is about building infrastructure. Infrastructure isn’t the same as control. It’s the difference between removing the guardrails and building better roads.
In my next post, I’ll show you what this looks like in practice. The actual syllabus structure, the folder templates, the feedback loops, and what I’m learning as students navigate these bundles for the first time.
For now, let’s see what happens when we stop counting points and start building systems that honor the messy, cumulative, deeply human work of learning.
Want to follow along? I’ll be documenting what works, what breaks, and what I’m revising as the semester unfolds. Subscribe to Digitally Literate to get updates, or reach out if you’re experimenting with similar approaches in your own teaching.