Improving Student Motivation by Ungrading

Recent interest in alternative grading strategies has been increasing in the Computer Science Education community. The umbrella term ungrading has been used to refer to a variety of practices that de-emphasize numeric grades. In this paper we present the results of implementing an ungrading scheme that eliminates numeric grades, allows resubmission of assignments, and encourages student input into their final assigned letter grade. We administered surveys measuring student attitudes and motivation at the start and end of three different upper level Computer Science elective courses using the new grading scheme and found a significant increase in students' feelings of intrinsic goal orientation (valuing coursework for its own sake), self-efficacy (feeling able to be successful), and control of learning (taking responsibility for their own learning). We observed that, given the opportunity, most students chose to redo only a small number of assignments, and most students requested final grades within a half-letter of the instructor's estimate. Overall, compared with prior iterations of the courses that were graded traditionally, the final grade point average did not significantly increase, while students' reported level of effort did significantly increase. Comments on post-course surveys indicate that students liked the new grading scheme, and they reported improved learning and reduced anxiety.