Thus, I was excited when I read a paper claiming that an attendance policy based on a unique opt-in model improved attendance. I gave it a try this past academic year. Not only did it not improve attendance, but it may have backfired and harmed certain students. In this post, I explain what happened and why I won’t be using the policy again.

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The paper that inspired me

In their study, Cullen and Oppenheimer (2024) randomly assigned course sections of a Gen Ed philosophy course at Carnegie Mellon to one of these attendance policies:

Mandatory Policy: Each student earned a 3% bonus to their final course grade if they missed 3 or fewer classes, but if they missed more than 3 classes, their final grade was reduced by 3%.

Opt-In Policy: Each student could choose whether attendance affected their grade. If they opted in, the policy was identical to the mandatory one. Otherwise, their attendance was not tracked and did not affect their grade. In the sections with the Opt-In Policy, 90% of students opted in.

Cullen and Oppenheimer found that attendance was higher in the Opt-In sections than in the Mandatory sections, especially later in the semester. They argued that the difference in attendance is likely due to students’ sense of autonomy: Making the choice to opt in to the attendance policy acted as a pre-commitment device, which motivated students to attend class.

What I did

Inspired by their results, in my fall 2025 General Biology course, I enacted an opt-in attendance policy that I dubbed the “Attendance Challenge.” It was identical to Cullen and Oppenheimer’s attendance policy (3% grade increase for three or fewer absences; 3% grade decrease for more than three absences), except I added one more element: being more than 5 minutes late counted as an absence. Two-thirds of the class (24 students) opted in to the Attendance Challenge. At the beginning of the semester, one student who had opted in, told me, “This is good, now I have to come to class!”

However, by the end of that semester, it didn’t feel like there was a dramatic improvement in attendance or tardiness. Now, I’m a scientist. I aim to make conclusions based on data, not feelings. To determine if the Attendance Challenge actually affected attendance, I needed to compare attendance rates for the opt-in semester with a comparable semester that did not have an opt-in Attendance Policy.

So that’s what I did.

Actually, that’s what I did in retrospect. Here’s what happened in reality:

I didn’t set out to do research on attendance, I was just trying a new approach to see if it encouraged students to come to class. At the end of Fall 2025, when I applied the -3% to the final grades of students with more than three absences, guess whose grades went down: The students who missed a lot of classes and, coincidentally, were already struggling in the course. I’ve written before about how grading for attendance hurts students, primarily because students who don’t attend class are already penalized by missing the in-class opportunity to learn.

Because it felt unfair to my most vulnerable students, I quit using the Attendance Policy and didn’t offer it in Spring 2026. But the Spring 2026 section was very similar to the Fall 2025 opt-in section (both sections had 36 students, the content and assessments were the same, and the grading system was the same), so when I wanted to see if the Attendance Challenge really did make an impact, the Spring 2026 semester acted as a control section.1

The results

The number of students with 3 or fewer absences was:

Fall 2025 (+ opt-in Attendance Challenge) = 25 students

Spring 2026 (no Attendance Challenge) = 24 students

In other words, the Attendance Challenge did not appreciably improve attendance.

My results differ from Cullen and Oppenheimer’s… why? My experimental conditions are notably different from theirs in a key way: I compared the opt-in policy section against a section that had no attendance policy at all. In contrast, Cullen and Oppenheimer compared the opt-in sections against sections that had the same attendance policy, but without the opt-in feature. Their experiment tested the impact of the opt-in feature specifically, whereas mine tested the impact of the attendance policy in general. Also, context always matters: the student body at Carnegie Mellon is presumably quite different from the student body at my community college.

While the Attendance Challenge didn’t improve attendance, it actually may have harmed some students. When I looked more closely at the data, I noticed something surprising: In my spring 2026 section, one student had more than 9 absences, but in my Fall 2025 section, three students had more than 9 absences and all three of them had opted in to the Attendance Challenge.

Each dot represents one student. Orange dots represent students who opted in to the Attendance Challenge and lost 3% of their final course grade because they had more than 3 absences or tardies. Horizontal dot displacement is for visualization purposes only.

Maybe those three students systematically struggle with class attendance anyway, so they opted in to the Attendance Challenge in the hopes that it would motivate them to come to class (but it didn’t). On the other hand—and this is what I worry about—maybe those students crossed a psychological threshold when they accumulated more than 3 absences. Maybe they thought F*** it, I’ve already lost the 3%, there’s nothing I can do (actually, there was2), so they were more likely to miss class thereafter. In other words, if the high-absence students hadn’t opted in, would they have had quite so many absences?

Why I won’t do it again

With class sizes of 36—and just three opt-in students with a high number of absences—it’s hard to make statistically meaningful conclusions. But there are enough reasons for me not to continue offering the Attendance Challenge in the future. First, it didn’t appear to improve attendance. Second, it disproportionately penalized students who were already struggling. The average final course grade of the opt-in students with more than 3 absences was 71% before the 3% penalty. These were students who were already struggling in the course and the Attendance Challenge penalized them further. Finally, while I don’t actually know whether those three students were more likely to miss class once they passed the 3-absence threshold, it’s not worth taking the risk with future students.

While their attendance policy didn’t work in my context, Cullen and Oppenheimer’s study raises a more general point worth pondering: Significant psychological research has shown that increasing one’s sense of autonomy can increase motivation and achievement. In what other ways can we offer students more autonomy in our courses? The potential rewards for student learning are certainly tantalizing, if we can figure out equitable ways to implement it.

Not everything you read on the internet was written by a human. For full transparency, here is how I used AI to help me write this post:

I ran a final draft of this post through Claude to help me catch grammatical and formatting errors.

As Fall semester gets underway, I thought I’d share some of my top posts that offer practical advice for grading and course design. If you find any of these particularly helpful, drop a comment to let me know!

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Communicate key course policies using a one-page “Graphical Syllabus”

Inspired by the Graphical Abstract—a visual overview of a scientific paper—I use a one-page Graphical Syllabus to outline key policies of my courses. The Graphical Syllabus is meant to supplement, not replace, the full course syllabus. You can find templates (Adobe Illustrator files) on my personal website that you are free to use and adapt.

Don’t grade on a curve, it hurts students (even when it’s meant to help)

Grading on a curve promotes competition, undermines the meaning of grades, and automatically assumes some students will fail before the course even starts. Don’t do it.

Don’t grade attendance, either

Grading for attendance hits students twice: first, each absence is a missed learning opportunity that hurts students on assessments, and second, it hurts them by docking points for each absence. Encourage attendance other ways.

Reward behavior with stickers, not grades

Yes, even college students like stickers! Rather than inflating the grade with extra credit, I use stickers to reward certain behaviors, like completing all the homework assignments in one month or using a college resource like the tutoring center. A certain number of stickers unlocks a treasure from a Treasure Box stocked with fidget toys. My Adobe Illustrator template file is free to use and adapt.

Consider using Multiple Grading Schemes

If you calculate course grades using weighted averaging of multiple grade categories (like homework, quizzes, exams, etc), considering offering multiple grading schemes that weight each category differently. This system rewards students with different strengths and (still unpublished) data suggest it is more equitable.

I hope you find some of these posts helpful. I’m happy to answer questions in the comments or provide resources not already linked above. Happy start to your Fall Semester!

Not everything you read on the internet was written by a human. For full transparency, here is how I used AI to help me write this post:

I did not use AI in any way to write this post.

My daughter’s mistake was endearing, but it’s normal for language development. Toddlers often go through a period of apparent language regression when, instead of parroting words they’ve already heard, they start applying rules to generate new words. It isn’t a sign that their learning is failing, but that they are assimilating new language rules.

What if college student learning follows the same pattern?

I’ve been reflecting recently on my daughter’s “clo” mistake after I attended a poster at the SABER1 Annual Meeting that reported unexpected data about student learning.

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The unexpected results

Dr. Mel Melendrez-Vallard from Anoka Ramsey Community College presented the poster. Her administration recently decided to eliminate the biology prerequisite for the microbiology course she teaches. Mel thought this was a terrible idea, but the administration went ahead and removed the pre-req anyway. So, she did what any self-respecting scientist would do: she collected data to prove her administration wrong.

It’s her story to tell, so I won’t give away her punchline, but I will tell you about a smaller result within her dataset that surprised me.

She compared exam performance across years for students who had taken biology before her class (“plus pre-req”) with students who had not taken biology yet (“no pre-req”). She had five major exams in the course, each centered on a particular topic.

Interestingly, the plus pre-req students performed worse than the no pre-req students on the genetics exam. This was perplexing. Did taking the biology pre-req somehow harm students’ understanding of genetics?

The hypothesis

Inspired by another talk at SABER2, Mel hypothesized that plus pre-req students already had some genetics knowledge, but they hadn’t fully accommodated3 their existing genetics conceptual framework with the new microbiology content. The genetics of microbes is quite different than the genetics of plants and animals, so it can be difficult for students to understand what concepts from their prior biology course apply to microbes.

If the plus pre-req students were in the process of conceptual accommodation, that might explain why they performed worse on the genetics exam. Maybe, like my daughter learning rules about plurality, it’s not that they knew less about genetics, but rather the exam caught them when they were in the act of accommodation. Maybe it looked like they knew less, but in actuality the next time they encountered genetics concepts the plus pre-req students would significantly outperform the no pre-req students.

Then again, maybe not.

Implications for research

Mel doesn’t have longitudinal data on students’ performance on genetics concepts throughout the semester, so we don’t know if her hypothesis is true4. But I think her results pose a more generalizable question worth considering in higher education:

How do we know if poor performance indicates a lack of learning, or a stepping stone to greater understanding?

I’ve drawn some hypothetical learning curves below.

If you only had data from Timepoint 3, you would conclude that Students A and B had learned more than Student C. But what if Student C’s poor performance at that timepoint represented the apparent “dip” in learning that can occur during the accommodation process? With a little more instruction or exposure to the concepts, that student would fully accommodate the new concepts and outperform the others.

The drawings above are hypothetical, but they raise real questions about how we know students are learning. If you apply a pedagogical intervention and measure student learning, and if you don’t see significant learning gains, does that mean the students haven’t learned as much as you wanted, or that you just happened to catch them at their “dip?”

Implications for assessment

One-off assessments are particularly susceptible to the learning “dip.” If you happen to test students while they are in the process of incorporating new concepts into their existing mental framework, it may look they haven’t learned much, when really, they’re just in the process of learning!

It certainly makes a compelling case for testing students on different concepts more than once, for example, through revisions or retakes. Of course, revisions and retakes often have the added benefit of giving students explicit feedback to improve on prior performance. That seems like a win all around.

When my daughter said she wanted to play with “the thing you hang a clo on,” I gave her explicit feedback to help her learn. Now that she’s 10, she knows that “clothes” is not plural for clo. But that doesn’t stop our family from using the term endearingly anyway: “Who left this dirty clo on the bathroom floor?!”

Not everything you read on the internet was written by a human. For full transparency, here is how I used AI to help me write this post:

I did not use AI in any way to write this post.

If you’re new to my Substack, welcome! I haven’t posted much recently because I haven’t had much wiggle room. That’s about to change; I have myriad thoughts about grading, teaching, and learning that I plan to share in the coming months.

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The importance of wiggle room in your grading system

Late this spring semester, Violet (pseudonym) scheduled a meeting to discuss grades with me. She was enrolled in my community college General Biology course and she wanted to know whether it was still possible for her to pass the course.

On her first of three Essay Exams, Violet had earned the equivalent of 35/100 points1. She was absent during the practice exam that doubles as an exam retake, so she missed the regrade opportunity to raise her score. Thus, that 35/100 would be included in her final grade calculation. Because I use Multiple Grading Schemes, the average of her three Essay Exam scores would contribute either 20%, 30% or 55% to her final course grade.

To her credit, Violet changed her study habits and earned the equivalent of 75/100 on Essay Exam 2. But Violet had also missed one of the in-class quizzes, and she hadn’t turned in most of the pre-class homework assignments. Twelve weeks into the semester, she wanted to know: Was it still possible for her to pass the course?

When Violet and I met one-on-one, I walked her through her potential final grade in each grading scheme. At the end of the semester I calculate each student’s grade in each grading scheme, and they get the highest grade they earned. Here’s what that would mean for Violet:

• Grading Schemes 1 and 3. Violet’s missing quiz and many incomplete homework assignments would lower her final grade in Scheme 1, and her 35/100 Essay Exam score would significantly lower her final grade in Scheme 3. It would be very difficult for her to pass with either of these schemes.

• Grading Scheme 2. This scheme heavily weights the Final Exam. Could Violet pass the course? Yes, it was possible — but only if she scored well on the Final Exam.

I hated that Violet’s success in the course hinged on one high-stakes exam. That type of one-and-done performance is exactly what I was trying to avoid when I started using alternative grading! Violet had no room for mistakes.

On reflection, however, I realized that my grading system did have wiggle room — Violet had just used it all up. She made mistakes early in the course, but later in the semester she changed her study habits and worked hard to succeed. In many traditionally-graded courses, her early mistakes would be impossible to overcome. But because of the wiggle room I had built into my grading system, passing was still possible.

At the end of this post, I’ll tell you how Violet did in the course, but first: At the same time Violet had used up all her wiggle room in my course, I had used it all up in my life.

The importance of wiggle room in your life

I teach part-time as an adjunct instructor and I’m writing a new General Biology textbook, and together, they are a lot of work. This year, the deadlines came fast and furious and I felt like I was drowning under Too Much Work.

I had limited wiggle room, and I felt the impact of it in two ways that are worth sharing.

First, like Violet, I needed wiggle room in my life for unexpected disturbances. A sick kid. A best friend in crisis. The school event for my kid that I failed to put on my calendar but which is happening tonight.

This spring, I had so much work that I had very little wiggle room — a few unexpected disturbances used it all up. Work started bleeding into my weekends, which I usually take pains to protect. I shaved off all kinds of activities that rejuvenate me and bring me joy, like weaving, hiking, and writing for my Substack (hence my recent silence). My emotional well-being suffered.

Second, without wiggle room, I was under pressure to be maximally productive with my time and as a result, I became less creative.

As an instructor and an author, a significant part of my job involves thinking. I do some of my most productive and creative thinking when I am using my body2: I take walks in my neighborhood, I go on hikes, and I weave. But when I have to produce something for an impending deadline — like lecture slides for tomorrow’s class or chapter revisions by the end of the week — I don’t have the time to do those thinking activities. Most of the time, my thinking activities don’t make my work more efficient, they just make the work I produce better. Without wiggle room in my schedule, I only had time to produce the next thing for the next deadline. I didn’t have time to spend on thinking to make it good. My course materials were fine, and my textbook manuscript chugged along, but the quality of my work suffered.

The importance of building in wiggle room (and what happened to Violet)

My and Violet’s stories highlight the importance of building in wiggle room. It turns out, Violet earned a high enough score on her final exam that she successfully passed my course. In her case, there was enough wiggle room built into my grading system that she could still be successful despite early mistakes in the course. In my case, there wasn’t enough wiggle room built into my academic schedule, so I had to take time from activities that rejuvenate me and give me room to think creatively, at the cost of my emotional well-being and the quality of my work.

We all need wiggle room for mistakes and unexpected disturbances, but also for activities that don’t seem productive but that substantially impact creative, deep thinking. As I plan my 2026-2027 academic year, I’m keeping wiggle room front and center.3 Are you?

Not everything you read on the internet was written by a human. For full transparency, here is how I used AI to help me write this post:

I wrote the first draft of the post without help from AI. I got feedback from Claude on two drafts and made minor wording changes in response to its feedback.

Structuring a grading system around the opportunity to reattempt assessments is a powerful way to encourage real learning. In practice, however, I’ve found that it significantly increases my grading load. Rather than grading one exam for each of my 40 students, built-in reattempts mean I have 10 or 20 or even 30 more to grade, depending on how many students reattempt the exam. There is also evidence that if exam re-takes are optional, they can exacerbate equity gaps, because students with commitments related to work or family are less likely to attend exam re-takes outside of class hours.

To incorporate reattempts in a way that equitably supports student learning and makes my grading load sustainable, I started using a unique “re-testing before testing” assessment model. Here’s how it works.

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The assessment structure

A major assessment in my community college Introductory Biology course is the Essay Exam. Each Essay Exam has 8 questions that target higher-level skills on Bloom’s taxonomy. Since the questions require students to apply and synthesize knowledge, the Essay Exams are open-note: students complete them on paper in class without access to electronic resources.1 Each question requires approximately a paragraph-length written response. Completing the 8-question Essay Exam takes most students the full 75-minute class period.

There are 3 Essay Exams in the 16-week semester. For each Essay Exam, I dedicate a full week of the course, largely to support the practice opportunities. Before students take the actual Essay Exam, I give them two opportunities to practice. One of those opportunities becomes the re-test opportunity later.

Practice Exam #1 is half-sized (4 questions) and they complete it as a regularly-scheduled homework assignment due Sunday night. After they submit their answers, they have access to the answer key, which they can compare to their own answers to learn from their mistakes.

Practice Exam #2 is also half-sized. Students complete it during the first half of the lecture period on Monday. Before they turn it in, they take a photo of their answers, which becomes important for the “re-test” later. For the rest of the class period, students work in teams to assign marks to sample student answers, which we then discuss together as a class. This helps them become familiar with my marking system, which is a modified version of the EMRN rubric. It also helps students learn the content by comparing their answers with sample answers and by hearing me discuss what evidence of understanding I’m looking for in each student response.

The actual Essay Exam takes place during the whole lecture period on Wednesday. I score every question on every Essay Exam. Since there is so much to grade (360 paragraph-length answers!), I only give students their scores on each question, not written feedback. I do not provide written feedback because there is no retake or revision opportunity after the Essay Exam.

The “regrade” process

If a student is unhappy with their score on their Essay Exam, they can submit a Regrade Request, in which I grade their in-class practice exam that they took before the Essay Exam. For the Regrade Request, students complete a brief reflection and they identify specific questions on their practice exam that they think will score higher than what they earned on their actual exam. This requires that they compare their answers with the answer key, which is why I tell them to take a photo of their practice exam before turning it in – I have their hard copy answers, but they can still reference their answers in the photo.

For each question on their practice exam that scores higher than a question on their Essay Exam, I replace the Essay Exam question score with the higher practice exam question score. For example, let’s say I scored Tom’s Essay Exam question 3 as “Revision Needed” (which earns 1 point in my scoring system). He requests that I grade question 1 on his practice exam, which I score as “Meets Expectations” (2 points). I replace one “Revision Needed” on his Essay Exam with a “Meets Expectations”, increasing his score by 1 point (out of 20 points total). Students can request that I grade all four of the questions on their practice exam if they think they earned at least a “Meets Expectation” on each one.

In this way, the practice exam is the optional re-assessment opportunity.

What I like

I like the way it supports learning for all students

I like that students get to practice the exam two times before actually taking it. The practice exams force students to engage in active recall, which is an effective study strategy.

I like that because the practice exams are built into our course structure, all students benefit from engaging in active recall, not just the students savvy enough to do it on their own as they study.

I like that because the in-class practice exam acts as the re-test opportunity, students take the practice exam seriously and actually try. This makes it more likely that they productively engage in active recall during the practice exam.

Since the practice exam occurs during regularly scheduled class time, I like that everyone has access to the re-test opportunity, not just the students who have the time to attend an optional re-test outside of class.

I like that one of the practice exams happens in the same classroom setting as the real exam, so students have a chance to acclimate to the testing environment with lower stakes before the real exam happens.

I like that students get to put their best foot forward

I like that what I actually grade (their effort on the Essay Exam) reflects the learning they’ve done after two practice exams, and so it should, theoretically, represent their most advanced level of learning. This is different than traditional re-testing, where the instructor grades a student’s first attempt, and the second (and third, etc).

I like that if students make silly mistakes on the Essay Exam, or if the wording of a question just doesn’t click with them, it doesn’t have to drag down their score. One time a student forgot to turn the page over, so she didn’t answer two questions on the Essay Exam. On a traditionally-graded exam, that would significantly reduce her grade, but with my re-testing option, she could replace those “Not Assessable” (0 point) scores with scores from two of her practice exam questions.

I like that this model makes my grading time sustainable

OK, real talk: Each semester I teach a 9-contact-hour course, which means I’m spending 9 hours per week in the classroom or lab with students. Those 9 hours don’t include the time I spend preparing for class, fielding emails, setting up and managing homework assignments, and inputting scores in the Learning Management System for my high-structure course that has many graded assignments. In reality, I spend roughly 15-18 hours per week on this one course. That doesn’t include the 8-9 hours it takes me to grade a set of Essay Exams (three times per semester).

I teach as an adjunct-by-choice, which means the pay is miserable2 and I have other demands on my time (notably, I’m writing a new General Biology textbook).

So, I don’t have a lot of time for grading.

I like that my re-testing before testing model reduces my grading time in several ways:

I grade students’ best effort, since they’ve already had 2 practice attempts to learn and improve. This reduces the number of regrades I need to do afterward.

Since there is no re-test opportunity after the Essay Exam, I don’t need to take the time to provide written feedback, I only provide scores on each question. This saves a lot of time (but there is a downside, see below).

When students request a regrade, I ask them to use the answer key to identify only those questions they think will earn a “Meets Expectation” or higher, so I don’t have to score every question on their practice exam, saving me time.

What I don’t like

I never give students individualized feedback. One of the four pillars of the Grading for Growth model is Helpful Feedback, because helpful feedback is essential for students to learn from their mistakes. But given the size of my class and the constraints on my time, I don’t see a way for me to sustainably provide individualized feedback to every one of my students.

Instead, I’ve designed the practice exam structure so students can learn from their mistakes by comparing their responses to example answers:

• For the in-person practice exam, after they turn in their answers, I immediately provide sample student answers and they work in teams to assign a score to each one. This doesn’t give them direct feedback about their own work, but it does give them a chance to think about what the “right answer” is immediately after having written their own responses.

• For the at-home practice exam, they are provided with the answer key after they submit their exam, and I trust them to do that comparison on their own (which I recognize is not ideal). I plan to improve this process by incorporating a structured self-review process into the practice exam homework assignment.

The other thing I don’t like is that my system does not offer a true re-test without a grade penalty. Since the practice exam is half-sized, students can get a maximum of 4 out of 8 of their question scores updated on their Essay Exam. I don’t see a way around this, because I make the practice exam half-sized so we have time in class afterward to discuss it. I don’t want to spend more class time on the practice exam, since we are already spending 3 full weeks (out of 16) on the essay exams alone.

It’s not a perfect system, but I think it does a good job of supporting equitable student learning through the assessment process within my time-limited constraints. If you have suggestions for how to improve the process, I’m all ears! And if you end up trying a similar re-test before testing model in your classroom, I’d love to hear how it works in your context.

Not everything you read on the internet was written by a human. For full transparency, here is how I used AI to help me write this post:

I did not use AI to help me write this post.

For context, I teach a 40-person Introductory Biology course at a community college in NC. I teach part-time as an adjunct-by-choice. With my other professional time, I am co-authoring a new General Biology textbook for majors.

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Start

This spring semester, I will start teaching using freshly-written chapters from the textbook I’m co-authoring. We have a complete first unit, which introduces topics related to the chemistry of life and evolution using an astrobiology lens. We ask questions like, “When searching for extraterrestrial life, why do scientists look for planets that have liquid water?” and “If life exists under the ice on Jupiter’s moon Europa, how could it get energy without sunlight?” These questions serve as a narrative chassis to introduce topics like hydrogen bonds and membrane biology.1

The material is still in rough draft form – notably, our production team hasn’t had time to make the rich set of multimedia we have planned – but I’m excited to see how our vision for interweaving narrative with course content and integrating scientific research into the story line works for my students.

Stop

I taught the same course this past fall semester, and it was the first time I tried balancing teaching with writing. (Last academic year, I took a “sabbatical” from teaching so I could focus on writing.) Combined with some personal challenges this fall, it was a real challenge keeping my head above water.2 In response, streamlining the time and mental load I spend on teaching is a top priority this year.

Don’t offer the Attendance Challenge again

I’ve been strongly opposed to grading for attendance, but last year I read a paper claiming that relative to de facto grading for attendance, letting students opt-in to grading for attendance can help boost attendance.

I’ve struggled with widespread attendance and tardiness issues since the pandemic, so last semester I instituted the “Attendance Challenge.” For students who opted in, if they had 3 or fewer absences3, I added 3% to their final grade, and if they had more than 3 absences, I subtracted 3%. Being more than 5 minutes late counted as an absence.

There were two things I didn’t like about the Attendance Challenge:

First, it required extra time and mental load for me to keep track of the attendance and tardiness for the two-thirds of students who opted-in to the Attendance Challenge.

Second, I didn’t like that it artificially boosted or reduced some students’ grades in a way that had nothing to do with actual demonstrations of learning. And guess whose grades were hurt by the Attendance Challenge? Those students who were already struggling.

So this semester, I won’t offer the Attendance Challenge again. (Though, I do wonder if it helped increase attendance…4)

Stop making separate lesson plan documents

In my active-learning centered “lectures,” I bounce back and forth between Powerpoint slides, whiteboard writing, and a document projector, all while orchestrating various in-class activities for the students. To coordinate all this, I write each day’s plans in a separate document, which I print before class. This lesson plan includes that day’s learning objectives, materials I need to bring to class, my minute-by-minute plan for what both I and my students will be during throughout the class period, and a seating chart for assigned teams. Here’s an example.

This fall semester, two things changed that made the lesson plan feel more onerous than helpful. First, I’ve been teaching long enough that I can come up with active learning activities on the fly, so I don’t need to meticulously plan every single one. I still prep materials for larger activities, but I’ve found that I can read the room and notice, They look confused, let’s do some Think-Pair-Share questions.

Second, when I was strapped for time this fall, I found it easier to have one document that was my guide through the lecture period, rather than my typical two (slides and lesson plan). Since I had to make Powerpoint slides anyway, I started using the slides as my guide. When I planned to write on the whiteboard or introduce an active learning activity, I simply inserted a slide for this (literally, “Dr. Dyer will write on the board about XYZ”).

So, going forward, I plan to use slides as my guide for the lecture and eliminate making and printing the lesson plan for each class period. I’m hopeful this will help streamline my prep for each day, but I’ll pay attention to whether I lose something important (bigger picture viewpoint? emphasis on learning objectives?).

Continue

I have two types of assessment in my course, and I designed them to support student learning in addition to assessing student understanding. I plan to continue using these assessment structures this year because I like the way they iteratively support learning.

Quizzes + Final Exam

These assessments are focused on lower- to mid-level Bloom’s questions, mostly in multiple-choice format. Students engage in the assessment four times, successively:

1. First, they take a practice quiz online for homework, which includes around 30-40 questions. This is graded on completion only. The goal is for students to engage in retrieval practice and identify where they have gaps in their understanding.

2. We use the first 25 minutes of class to take the quiz in person. First, they take a 10-question quiz in class. They take five quizzes throughout the semester. The questions are identical, or very similar to, questions from the practice quiz.

3. Immediately after taking the quiz individually, they take it again, this time as a team. They use IF-AT scratch off cards to get immediate feedback. (This is a version of two-stage testing.) Afterward, we discuss the most challenging questions as a class.

4. At the end of the semester, they take a final cumulative exam, which has questions similar in content and format to the quiz questions.

Because I use Multiple Grading Schemes, students who do well on the quizzes can have those scores counted in their final grade, while students who don’t do well on the quizzes — but learn from the quiz-taking experience and demonstrate mastery on the final exam — only have the final exam score included in their grade.

I like that the quizzes are designed in progressive layers, from at-home practice to individual practice to team practice, to help prepare students for the final exam.

Essay Exams

These assessments are focused exclusively on higher Bloom’s level open-ended questions that require paragraph-length responses. There are three Essay Exams over the course of the semester, and for each one, students engage in each assessment three times successively:

1. They complete a 4-question practice exam at home and after submitting their responses, can compare their answers to a key.

2. We use a whole class period for an in-person practice exam. We use half the class period for students to take a new 4-question practice exam, then we spend the rest of class discussing example student answers to each question.

3. The next class period, students take the real Essay Exam, which has 8 questions.

I’ve designed the Essay Exam structure such that if they are unhappy with their Essay Exam score, they can request that I score their practice exam as a kind of “re-test” opportunity. A longer blog post about that “pre-test as re-test” format is forthcoming.

I like these assessment structures because I’ve seen the way that – when students take the practice opportunities seriously – they help students learn and be better prepared for the assessments that actually end up counting toward their final grade. That’s why I plan to keep them.

Here’s hoping that my students learn more, and I do a better job keeping my head above water, in 2026.

Not everything you read on the internet was written by a human. For full transparency, here is how I used AI to help me write this post:

I did not use AI to help me with this post.

This is a vulnerable post because admitting mistakes is hard, and because in this case, I don’t think there is a Right way forward. I’m certain some folks will disagree with the decisions I made in the fallout of my mistake. In any case, I hope this post can be thought-provoking for you as you consider what grades mean in your context.

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My mistake

I teach a 40-student General Biology course at a community college in NC. I use Multiple Grading Schemes, which is a points-based grading system based on weighted averages. Rather than calculate students’ grades using one grading scheme (where, for instance, homework is worth 10% of the grade and the final exam is worth 20% of the grade), I calculate each students’ final grade using three different schemes, and I give each student the highest grade they earned.

Because our Learning Management System cannot calculate grades using Multiple Grading Schemes, I tell my students to use a Google spreadsheet called the WHAT IF Grade Calculator that I set up to calculate their grades for them. All semester long, when students had a question about their grade, I told them to use the Grade Calculator. I like the Grade Calculator because it clarifies my grading system and it gives students agency, allowing them to make decisions about what they need to do to get the grade they want.

As I was calculating final grades this week, I realized that the Grade Calculator had a calculation error. Throughout the semester, I told students that I would use either their highest 5 out of 6 lab quiz grades, or their lab exam score1. But it turns out that the Grade Calculator added all six lab quiz scores, rather than just the best 5. Essentially, it meant that for the lab score, there were 110 points available for a 100-point score rather than 100. The result is that the Grade Calculator inflated students’ grades by up to 1.7% relative to the score they should have gotten if I had set up the Grade Calculator correctly.

This didn’t affect many students’ final grades, because at my institution we only have letter grades (A, B, C, etc) without + or – designations, so it only affected students’ grades that were already near a grade border. But it did affect two students’ scores, lowering the letter grade they thought they were getting based on the Grade Calculator.

My dilemma

When I sent an announcement to my students admitting that there was a calculation error in the Grade Calculator and that I would be calculating their grades using the correct calculations, I received an email from Maria (pseudonym) that said she felt “like the rug had been pulled out from under her.” She had been using the Grade Calculator and thought she would be getting an A, but using the correct grade calculations, she would now get a B.

On the one hand, Maria felt betrayed because all semester I had said, “Don’t trust the grade in Canvas, use the WHAT IF Grade Calculator instead!” That’s what she had done, and the grade she calculated was incorrect because of my calculation mistake.

I think her feelings of betrayal were valid. All semester, I had said “This is the game you’re playing,” and then I changed the game last minute by changing (i.e. correcting) the way the grade was calculated.

On the other hand, my calculation error artificially inflated student grades in a way that was not consistent with my intended grading system.

With the calculation mistake, Maria would get an A. Did she really earn an A? She completed every homework assignment, never missed class, and submitted every available regrade request. Her scores on assessments averaged in the low- to mid-B range.

Did Maria deserve a B or an A? Should I use the correct grade calculations or the original calculations that included the calculation error?

My decision

The dilemma put two of my pedagogical values in conflict with each other. Here is a tidy pro/con table laying them out, though my mind was much less tidy during the decision-making process.

At first, I decided to use the correct grade calculation, because it seemed to me that a student who consistently earned B-level scores on assessments should earn a B.

But the more I thought about it, the more I questioned the notion that there is a “correct” grade to assign to students. Grades are not objective (Allen 2005, Schinske & Tanner 2014, Schwab et al. 2018, Brookhart et al. 2016). If I was tasked with measuring Maria’s height, there would be a Right answer (1.7 meters). But there is no Right answer when it comes to grades. To some instructors, earning B-level scores on her assessments would indicate that Maria should earn a B. To other instructors, her B-level assessment scores plus her dedicated performance on non-assessment tasks would warrant an A.

In the end, I decided to use the original Grade Calculator, despite the calculation error. Maria received an A in the course. Did she deserve it? I don’t know. But I do know that the trust my students put in me is more important than artificially inflating students’ grades by 1.7 points2.

What would you have done?

Not everything you read on the internet was written by a human. For full transparency, here is how I used AI to help me write this post:

I did not use AI to help me write this post.

Fair enough, they usually don’t. When I was a student this past spring, I didn’t read the syllabus either. Why would I? It’s a long and unwieldly document1 that includes policies specific to the individual course intermixed with boilerplate language about institutional policies and resources. Reading a syllabus is a sifting game: can you pick out the relevant information from all the other stuff?

To help my students home in on my course-specific policies, I use a one-page Graphical Syllabus. I was inspired to create a Graphical Syllabus because of the recent popularity of scientific papers including Graphical Abstracts. Just like the Graphical Abstract does not replace the written abstract, my Graphical Syllabus is meant to supplement — not replace — the full-length syllabus.2

You can learn a lot about my course just by looking at this Graphical Syllabus. You’ll notice that I use Multiple Grading Schemes, and I’m including a new-to-me “Attendance Challenge.” (This seems contradictory to my claim that Grading attendance hurts students, but this 2024 paper suggests that being able to opt-in to an attendance policy may benefit students by acting as a pre-commitment device, so I’m going to try it this semester.) I also use Late Work Tokens to provide flexibility within a structured system of deadlines and stickers to incentivize certain behaviors without directly affecting the grade.

The Graphical Syllabus is not just there to be pretty — it’s a demonstrated way to improve student understanding of course policies. This recent paper shows that the graphical representation of a course policy increased the number of students who used the policy, suggesting that the graphical representation increased students’ awareness and understanding of the policy. The Graphical Syllabus also aligns with Universal Design for Learning principles by providing multiple means for students to engage with the syllabus.

If you’d like to create your own Graphical Syllabus, I provide my Graphical Syllabus templates as Adobe Illustrator files on my website. Feel free to use, adapt, and share.3 If you don’t use Adobe Illustrator, you could create a Graphical Syllabus using Powerpoint, Canva, or any other illustration tool.

While it takes time to create your first Graphical Syllabus, it’s imminently reusable for future classes and has the potential to onboard students faster as they become acquainted with your course structure and policies.

Here’s to quick onboarding and engaged students. Happy start to your fall semester!

Not everything you read on the internet was written by a human. For full transparency, here is how I used AI to help me write this post:

I did not use AI to help me write this post.

2

My one-page Graphical Syllabus is accompanied by a one-page Semester at a Glance (see below). Together, the two documents introduce almost every aspect of the syllabus that is specific to my course.

During the 2024-2025 academic year, I took a “sabbatical” from teaching to focus on getting started writing a new General Biology textbook for majors. With my extra time, I enrolled as a student in a conceptual physics class at the community college where I normally teach biology. I wanted to re-experience what it’s like to be a novice in an introductory science course, because I think doing so will help me become a better educator and textbook author. Since I’ve never taken physics1, it was a course that let me be a novice science learner again.

As the semester progressed, I wrote here on my Substack about my experiences as an educator-turned-student. In today’s post, I summarize the lessons I learned over the semester.

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1. Different students are successful in different ways. The grading structure should support that.

I just got my final grade in my physics course: I earned a B.

This is interesting because I performed very well on every exam (my lowest exam score was 96/100). So how did I receive a B? Because I barely did any of the homework.

I could care less about my grade in this course — I took the course to learn (both about physics and about teaching & learning), not to earn course credit — but I think it’s interesting that despite demonstrating mastery of the content on all of the assessments, I earned a lower grade because I didn’t jump through the behavioral hoops of doing the homework.

I recognize that I, a PhD scientist, am not like most students. Most students who skip the homework don’t do well on the assessments. But some students do. Every semester I have one or two students who can skip the homework and do well on assessments. Some students are the opposite: they do well on the homework, but balk under the pressure of an exam. In other words, different students are different, and I think our grading structures should let different types of students earn their best grade in the way that works best for them. That’s why I use Multiple Grading Schemes.2

2. To learn, it helps to know what learning feels like

Being a student again highlighted for me what learning feels like. I noticed that the first time my physics instructor presented a topic, it seemed straightforward when she explained it, but the concept felt like a slippery fish when I tried to explain it to others. That “slippery” feeling was key to my knowing what I understood, and what I didn’t! Because of my academic background, I knew how to 1) recognize the feeling of not understanding and 2) self-direct to behaviors that helped me get closer to understanding. Not all students have those metacognition-related skills, but they are teachable.

3. Be careful using jargon and language that implies prior knowledge

A couple times during the semester my physics instructor used the words “clearly” and “remember” for concepts that were new or, well, not clear. These slip-ups had the effect of making me feel like I should know something I didn’t, and that it was somehow my fault. The same feeling can come from the instructor using jargon without defining it. In other words, it’s good practice for the instructor to be aware of the audience (what students are reasonably expected to know or not know) and tailor their language accordingly.

4. When using active learning activities in the classroom, social interactions and thinking take time

My physics instructor interspersed lecture with Think-Pair-Share questions, which are a common way to engage students in active learning3. The instructor posed a question to the class, waited for students to think about it, (sometimes) gave us time to talk to a neighbor about it, and then asked for one or two pairs of students to share their answer with the class. As an instructor, I use think-pair-share activities all the time; it was super useful to be on the receiving end of the activity because I learned that it takes time to engage my thinking brain to work on a problem, and it takes time to pair up with the stranger sitting next to me to discuss it. This has practical implications for how to efficiently implement active learning activities in the classroom.

5. Effective and equitable teaching takes instructor time, which is not free

After our first exam, my physics instructor said she would normally offer a “points-back” assignment, but since the class was too big and she didn’t have time to grade it all, she couldn’t offer it. But a “points-back” assignment is a perfect opportunity for students to learn from their mistakes — an important part of the learning process, and one that has been shown to improve learning and have more equitable outcomes when instituted in science classrooms4. Because my instructor was an underpaid adjunct, she didn’t have the time to grade exam revisions. Thus, effective and equitable education hinges on institutions supporting instructors so they can spend the time it takes to teach effectively and equitably.

6. Instructors can implement systems that deliberately support absent students

I missed class a few times during my semester-long physics class. Catching up on the material I missed helped me think more deeply about structures that instructors can implement to support students who miss class. Many of these structures require only a minimum of instructor effort but can have a large impact on helping students make up what they missed.

Header photo by Kai Rohweder on Unsplash

Not everything you read on the internet was written by a human. For full transparency, here is how I used AI to help me write this post:

I did not use AI to help me in any way to write this post.

In my talk, I will outline some of my big picture views on how grading structures can support both student learning and classroom equity. I will also give specific details about the pedagogical and grading structures I use in my own Introductory Biology courses, and I will briefly describe some of the major innovations we are planning for the new General Biology textbook I’m co-authoring for W. W. Norton2.

The webinar is hosted by the Society for the Advancement of Biology Education Research (SABER), but you don’t have to be a SABER member to attend!

Details:

Friday, May 16, 2025

Virtual on Zoom at 11am PT / 12pm MT / 1pm CT / 2pm ET

Free!

Registration Required. Register here: https://saberbio.org/event-6139777

I don’t typically post advertisements for webinars on my Substack, but I thought I would share this one because it overlaps with many of the themes I write about here and I thought some folks would want to know about it.

This year, since I’m “on sabbatical,” I’ve enrolled as a student in an introductory physics course at the community college where I normally teach biology. I’m hoping that being a student again will help me become a better educator and a better textbook author.

I just finished studying for the third exam, which covered some content that I missed because of an absence. Studying content I missed in class taught me a lot about how to support students through absences.

Students need substantive resources to learn missed content

The class I missed covered content related to electricity and electrical circuits. I know almost nothing about electricity, so to study for the exam, I read the textbook. Luckily for me, my instructor follows the textbook very closely, so it was easy to learn exactly what I had missed in class. But not all instructors follow the textbook closely, or use a textbook at all — including me.1

Being a student again helped me realize the value of a good textbook for supporting students who miss class. But a good textbook isn’t the only way students can learn missed content! Here are some other resources that instructors can provide to support students when they miss class:

A Good Textbook

A good textbook is very helpful if the course is tightly aligned to the textbook, but it’s not helpful if the course doesn’t use one at all. In cases where the textbook includes more detail or more jargon than the instructor chooses to teach, the textbook can be actively distracting.

Recordings

If audio or video are recorded during class, posting the recording is a huge help for students who miss class.

Slides

Some slides are self-explanatory and thus actually useful for students who miss class, but some are not. My slides tend to be pretty bare bones — I design them to support in-class activities, which means they often include only a diagram or a question for a Think-Pair-Share activity (but not the answer). My students have complained that my slides are unhelpful when they’re studying outside of class. Since my slides don’t include explanatory text, it’s hard for students to decipher the take-home message if they missed hearing me talk about it or missed participating in an active learning activity related to it. But providing all that explanatory text (for example, in the “notes” section on Powerpoint slides), takes a lot of time, which I don’t have.

Last year, I figured out a work around that let me use my bare-bones slides and provide explanatory support for students who missed class. I started using a digital sketch pad to annotate my slides in Powerpoint during class, then I saved the drawings and posted my slides “with scribbles” to the Learning Management System (LMS). Students love these and talk about how helpful they are for their studying.

There are a few other resources students can use when they miss class, like getting notes from a classmate or attending tutoring on campus, but these resources aren’t provided by the instructor. Nevertheless, instructors can still play a role in making these resources accessible for everyone.

Instructors can support students beyond just offering resources

While studying electrical circuits from the physics class I missed, I considered asking a classmate to borrow their notes. However, I know almost none of my classmates’ names, so I didn’t feel comfortable asking the stranger sitting next to me to copy their notes. Maybe if I were more outgoing, or if I already had a friend in the class, I could have gotten notes from a classmate. And look! Right here we can see inequity in action. Students who are more outgoing, or who already have friends in the class, are in a privileged position when they miss class, because it’s easier for them to access the resource of classmates’ notes.

But what if instructors could make classmates’ notes more easily accessible for all students? There is a way to do that, actually!

Create a system for students to share notes with the whole class

In my biology courses, at the beginning of each class period I ask for two volunteers to post their notes to a designated section of our LMS. Posting their notes is one way students can earn points toward “Community Learning Contributions,” which makes up about 3% of the grade, so students actually do it. My students have talked about how much they appreciate having access to other students’ notes, both for when they miss class and for when they don’t! (They also mention how much better their own note-taking is for the days they sign up to post their notes.)

Incentivize students attending ‘office hours’ or using tutoring services

I’ve often heard faculty lament that students don’t take advantage of resources on campus that are available to support students, like ‘office hours’2 with the instructor or freely-available tutoring offered by the institution. These resources are excellent options for students who need to make up missed content! But I’ve found that encouraging students to use these resources verbally only goes so far; students can be intimidated by meeting with the instructor, or they feel there is a stigma about using support services like tutoring.

In my experience, the real barrier is getting students to utilize these resources the first time, because once they’ve experienced how non-threatening (and hopefully helpful!) office hours or tutoring can be, they are much more likely to return.

To incentivize students using student-support services like tutoring, I created a non-grade-associated Sticker Chart that rewards students for engaging in certain behaviors (including, but not limited to, using institutional resources like tutoring, counseling, the food bank, and others). In my courses, not all students are motivated by the sticker system, but for the majority who are, it can help lower the barrier for that first time going to a student-support resource.

Is it the instructor’s responsibility to support students who miss class?

When a student misses class, the responsibility lies with the student to make up what they missed. But, I argue, it is the instructor’s responsibility to make sure every student has equitable access to resources to help them make up what they missed.

What does it mean for every student to have equitable access? It means more than just making sure resources are available — equitable access means:

1. Lowering barriers to access, like making sure all students have access to classmates’ notes, and

2. Incentivizing behaviors that help students learn, which especially benefits students who are learning “how to college.”

While the responsibility to make up missed work ultimately falls to the student, I think instructors have an obligation to ensure equitable access to resources that can help students make up what they missed — and ultimately help them succeed.

Not everything you read on the internet was written by a human. For full transparency, here is how I used AI to help me write this post:

I used Claude substantially to help me organize my thoughts for this post. I gave it a draft post (that was very different from the current version) plus some dictated text from thinking out loud. Claude pointed out that I seemed to be making two arguments about instructor responsibility (offering substantive resources and helping students access other resources). All of the text in this post was written by me, except the last sentence, which was written by Claude and significantly modified by me.

Header photo by Seen on Unsplash

A couple weeks ago, we got our first exam back. While she was handing back our exams, our instructor said (paraphrased):

The average score on the exam was 71. If the average had been lower, I would normally offer a “points-back” assignment, but because this class is so large, I don’t have the time to grade it all. Instead, I would have curved the exam grade, but again, the average score was 71, which I’m happy with, so I don’t need to curve it.

I wrote another post about the profound equity implications of my instructor not having enough time to offer the “points-back” assignment. In this post, I reflect on the equity implications of the second option she mention: grading on a curve.

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I’ll cut to the chase: Grading on a curve hurts students, even when it’s meant to help them. I’m not the first person to make this argument, but I thought I would summarize what I see as the key critiques of grading on a curve. But first, what is “grading on a curve?”

What is “Grading on a Curve?”

“Grading on a curve” can refer to a few different practices. I discuss a couple of the most common practices here.

In the most traditional sense, grading on a curve means adjusting student grades so the grade distribution follows the Normal Distribution (or “bell curve”). The Normal Distribution is an idealized distribution meant to describe random events like flipping a coin.1 The normal distribution looks like this, where “μ” represents the mean and “σ” represents one standard deviation. The y-axis is frequency of events with that value, e.g. there are many more events with a value close to the mean than values far away from the mean.

Adjusting course grades to a Normal Distribution means the distribution of grades follows the Normal Distribution, with “C” as the average grade:

In a course graded on a curve, 68% of students get a C. Let’s look at what this means for actual student grades. The following are real final course grades from one of my community college biology courses.

At my institution, we use traditional grade cut-offs, so students who score 90-100 get an A, 80-89 get a B, and so on. In this example, 9 out of 31 (29%) students earned an A.

However, if I were to grade on a curve, I would adjust the distribution to fit the Normal Distribution, so the top 2% of students earn an A, the next 14% of students earn a B, and so on according to the Normal Distribution. Here’s what that would look like:

In this case, it’s obvious that grading on a curve hurts many students: four students who earned 90-91 points are now earning a C instead of an A! And all of the students who earned 80-89 points (typically a B) are now earning a C.

But it’s often the case that instructors grade on a curve to help students, especially when overall scores are low. Let’s consider a different grade distribution with lower overall scores. Note that the high score in this class is 83.

Grading on a curve appears to help many of these students by increasing their grade, so students earning scores in the high 70s now get a B and students earning scores in the 60s get Cs. That’s good, right? It’s not actually (see more below).

It’s worth noting that instructors may use a different curve than the Normal Distribution. For example, an instructor may decide that the top 15% of students earn an A, the next 15% earn a B, etc. This is still considered grading on a curve.

Another way instructors may adjust the grade distribution is to scale the course grades. For example, instructors may add points to everyone’s score. While this results in an adjustment to the distribution of grades, I call it “scaling” because it shifts all the scores according to a scalar value, rather than fitting the grades to a predetermined distribution. Here is an example of scaling grades:

In this case, all students’ scores are shifted up. Again, it seems like this helps students, but it doesn’t.

Grading on a Curve Hurts Students

There are a number of arguments why grading on a curve hurts students. I don’t outline them all here (but see Bowen & Cooper 2021 for a comprehensive list), rather, I outline what I think are the most salient arguments.

Also, a quick note: instructors can grade one assignment or a whole course on a curve. In this post, I refer to final course grades, but the arguments below also apply to grading individual assignments on a curve.

Grading on a curve promotes competition instead of collaboration

If you are a student in a course that is graded on a curve, your grade depends on how your fellow students perform. If you want to earn an A, the last thing you should do is help a classmate, because if they score higher than you, you might lose your chance to earn an A. In fact, you could increase your likelihood of a good grade by sabotaging other students. Yikes. Lots of evidence shows that working with peers (inside or outside of class) improves learning; grading on a curve creates the psychological conditions that discourage this type of collaborative learning.

Grading on a curve divorces the grade from actual student performance

Most people would argue that a grade should represent how well a student demonstrates the content and skills they’ve learned in the course. However, when grades are curved, each student’s grade actually represents that student’s performance relative to other students in the class. This is problematic for several reasons:

• The same performance can earn wildly different grades, depending on the other students in the course. As an example, I recently wrote a Letter of Recommendation for a top-notch student, “Chase.” I wanted to write that Chase was one of the top students in the class (he earned 96/100 overall), but in reality, three other students (out of 20) scored higher than him. It turns out, in that semester, 8 out of 20 students earned 95/100 or above. This isn’t grade inflation — it was just a group of really high-achieving students. If I had graded that semester on a curve, some of my truly high-achieving, high-scoring students would have earned a B or even a C simply because there were a lot of other high-achieving students enrolled that semester.

• Because the same performance can earn wildly different grades depending on the context, the grade does not provide meaningful information to students about their progress. If I had graded that semester on a curve, Chase would have received a B, sending a signal that he still had gaps in his understanding, which he didn’t.

• The opposite can be true too: if all the students in a course score poorly, grading on a curve to raise their scores sends the message that they’ve learned more than they actually have. If all the students in a course are scoring poorly, either the teaching needs to improve, the assessments need to be adjusted, or both.

Grading on a curve automatically assumes some students will fail

Grading on a curve assumes — before the semester even starts — that some percentage of students will fail. This assumption comes from the use of the Normal Distribution to curve grades. Remember that the Normal Distribution describes random events, like coin flips. It turns out, the Normal Distribution is pretty good at describing some continuous variables in biology, like human height or the size of acorns in a population. But human intelligence is not best described by a Normal Distribution, and more importantly, performance in a course is not measuring absolute intelligence, but a mixture of things, including a student’s prior knowledge, the proficiency of the instructor, unexpected life events that affect students’ ability to perform on assessments, skills acquired from well- or poorly-resourced high schools, and on and on. There is no evidence that student proficiency in a course is best described by a Normal Distribution.

I’d like to live in a world where all my students earn A’s. Not because of “grade inflation,” but because they all learned everything I set out for them to learn. Grading on a curve directly opposes this worldview by assuming a predetermined distribution of student proficiency even before the semester begins.

Caveat: We don’t actually know that grading on a curve is inequitable

Recent calls for improving equity in higher education, especially in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) courses, have specifically named grading on a curve as problematic for equitable outcomes. Many recent publications specifically link grading on a curve with inequity.2

However, to my knowledge there is no evidence in the literature that grading on a curve perpetuates or worsens inequities. This seems like an obvious gap in the literature.

Note that a lack of evidence does not mean there is no link between inequity and grading on a curve — just that no one has used data to demonstrate the link! It’s worth noting that there is data linking grading on a curve with students feeling discouraged and dropping out of STEM majors (Seymour & Hunter, 2019).

In the physics class I’m enrolled in, my instructor said she would have offered us a points-back assignment on our exam if the average exam score had been lower. But my high exam score pulled up the average! I think it’s unfair that my fellow students didn’t get a chance to have a points-back assignment because they got unlucky enough to be in the same course with me, a PhD scientist enrolled in a introductory physics course.

Not everything you read on the internet was written by a human. For full transparency, here is how I used AI to help me write this post:

I asked Claude to help me illustrate the Normal Distribution and course grade distributions, but its output was terrible, so I made my own illustrations. I also asked it to help me identify the word “continuous variable” when I mentally blanked on the opposite of “discrete variable.” I did not use Claude to help with any other aspect of writing this post.

This semester I’m enrolled in a physics course at the community college where I normally teach biology. Being a student again is teaching me a lot about teaching and learning in the science classroom, and I’m sharing those insights here.

This week I’m preparing for my second physics exam. While I have a PhD in genetics, I have never taken a physics course. Most of the concepts are completely new to me, so I get to experience what it’s like to learn something totally new. As I watch myself learn, I’ve made two notable observations:

• I have to actively work with new concepts to understand them

• I know what learning feels like and I self-direct to behaviors that help me learn

Neither are surprising observations, but it’s powerful to experience them firsthand in a classroom setting, and they both have practical implications for teaching.

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What does learning feel like? It feels like a struggle

While I know almost nothing about physics, I do have a PhD, which kind of makes me a professional learner. As I sit in class, or explain concepts to someone else, or when I’m studying for the exam, I have a pretty good sense of what I understand and what I don’t.

For example, in class we recently learned about the buoyancy force, but when I later tried to explain it to a friend, I couldn’t. I knew there was some relationship between the displaced fluid and the buoyancy force, but I couldn’t explain what that relationship was. That’s how I knew I didn’t understand it. My friend knows more about physics than me, so when I stumbled through trying to explain the buoyancy force, he tried to correct me but I said, “Don’t interrupt, let me work this out.” I knew that to understand it, I needed to work on the ideas with my own brain, not just hear someone else explain it.

Likewise, when I’m in class listening to my professor lecture, the concepts make sense in a vague sort of way. She works through problems on the whiteboard and I can follow all of her reasoning. But I know I’m barely learning - the concepts feel “slippery” in my mind. When we’re in class, I want to have the chance to work on problems on my own. I know I need to struggle to learn: I need to figure out which formula to use, I need to try to explain a concept to someone else, I need to figure out which numbers in a word problem equate with which variables in a formula, etc. Often when I try to do those things, I can’t. I fumble around. Sometimes I get stuck, and then I reach out for help - from the textbook, the instructor, or ChatGPT - to help me figure out how to get started, then I take it from there. Engaging in those struggles is where the real learning happens.

We know this is how students learn - it is the basis for encouraging instructors to use Active Learning principles in the classroom. In an active learning classroom, lecture is regularly interrupted with activities like problem solving, discussion, and other opportunities for students to practice using new concepts and skills. The idea is that, by building these opportunities into the classroom, all students benefit from them, not just the ones who already know to engage in those behaviors at home. Additionally, struggling with concepts in the classroom means students can ask questions, get support from peers, and get immediate feedback directly from the instructor, which can help bridge the gap when they are stuck. Unsurprisingly, courses in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) that regularly employ active learning activities significantly improve student learning.

Knowing what learning feels like makes students better learners

I’m not surprised that when I’m learning new concepts, I need to actively engage my brain in problems that help me build my understanding. But I am a little surprised at how obvious it is to me when I understand something and when I don’t. The ability to know when I don’t understand something a skill in itself — it’s called metacognition — and I’m very good at it, which is unsurprising because I’ve spent a lot of years being a student.

However, as an instructor, I know that many students are not skilled in metacognition. Students often overestimate what they understand, which means they can easily waste time “studying” using methods that don’t actually build their understanding, then they come unprepared for assessments. This is the basis for when a student comes to me and says, “But I spent so much time studying, how could I have failed the exam?” And when I ask how they studied, they say, “I re-read my notes and the powerpoint slides.” Listening and reading are about the least effective ways to build understanding; effective studying requires using concepts and skills in novel contexts. Re-reading notes just doesn’t do that.

This has me wondering: how I can build my students’ metacognitive skills, and in so doing, build their ability to self-regulate their learning?

I’m not the first person to think about improving students’ metacognitive skills — it is an entire subdiscipline in education research. In fact, my home academic society, the Society for the Advancement of Biology Education Research, is hosting a panel discussion later this month (March 21, 2025) about fostering metacognition in students. You bet I’ll be there.

But while there are various assignments designed to build students’ metacognitive skills (I’ve used some in my classroom!), I do wonder about this: do metacognition-supporting interventions help students if the students don’t care?

Here’s what I mean. As I study for my next physics exam, I notice that I want to learn and therefore I engage actively in activities that help me learn, like explaining concepts to others and working hard to understand how to get the right the answer on the homework, not just trying to get the right answer. I want to help students engage in learning like this, by noticing what really helps them learn and actively engaging in those activities, not just “going through the motions.” I want to help students see that going through the motions is often a waste of time - they need to struggle with the content (really wrestle with it in their minds!) to learn it well.

So it becomes a chicken and egg problem. I want to help students transition from “going through the motions” to engaging in the hard work of learning. But if I assign one or more metacognition-related assignments, how do I get the students to engage in the work meaningfully, so they develop the metacognitive skills that will ultimately lead to meaningful engagement with other course content?

I guess this is the “you can lead a horse to water but not make it drink” problem that is inherent in education. I can only help students learn if they want to learn. But for those students who do want to learn, assignments that help build metacognition could help improve their ability to self-regulate their learning, and, powerfully, give them skills to succeed in my course and all those that come after.

Before enrolling in a physics course as a student, I knew that active learning activities helped students learn more in the classroom, and I knew that activities that build metacognition helped students improve their studying and overall learning. But being a student again has made the importance of these processes come into stark relief. While I already employ active learning activities throughout my courses, I’m pondering how I can meaningfully help my students build their metacognitive skills, and how to motivate them to take it seriously.

Not everything you read on the internet was written by a human. For full transparency, here is how I used AI to help me write this post:

I did not use AI in any capacity to write this post.

Last week, I took my first exam in 20 years. It was in my introductory physics course, a class I’m taking at my community college because I’ve never taken physics before, and because by being a science student again, I hope to become a better science educator.

We got our exams back on Tuesday. While the instructor was handing back exams, she made an off-hand comment that illuminated a deeply powerful truth about systemic inequity in higher education.

Buckle up folks, it’s about to get real.

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Here’s what my instructor said (paraphrased):

The average score on the exam was 71. If the average had been lower, I would normally offer a “points-back” assignment, but because this class is so large, I don’t have the time to grade it all. Instead, I would have curved the exam grade, but again, the average score was 71, which I’m happy with, so I don’t need to curve it.1

Let’s unpack this.

Effective & equitable teaching engages students in The Learning Cycle

My instructor said she would normally offer a “points-back assignment” after the exam. This is good teaching! Here’s why:

Learning is a mistake-making process and good teaching engages students in that process. Here is a poignant illustration of What Learning Looks Like:

In the video, a skateboarder tries a new move, doesn’t make it, receives feedback (in his body), and he tries again, and again, and again. Eventually he makes the move, and he is able to repeat it consistently afterward.

Although our students usually learn classroom content in less physical ways, learning still occurs like this: a novice tries something new, makes mistakes, receives useful feedback, and tries again. I call this The Learning Cycle.

Engaging students in The Learning Cycle is both effective and equitable. We have lots of evidence to support this claim:

Active Learning. Active learning activities are interruptions to lecture that engage students in recall, problem-solving, discussion, and other activities that require students to practice using new concepts or skills during class time when they can receive immediate feedback from the instructor. Incorporating active learning activities in the classroom, instead of straight lecturing, increases student learning and reduces the performance gap between historically disadvantaged and advantaged groups.

High-Structure Courses. High structure courses incorporate regularly-spaced learning opportunities throughout the semester, such as weekly homework assignments and frequent low-stakes quizzes. This course format forces students to practice spaced retrieval — i.e. engaging in the material regularly, rather than cramming before an exam — which results in deeper, longer-term learning. High-structure courses increase student learning and reduce the performance gap between historically disadvantaged and advantaged groups.

Growth Mindset. Growth mindset is the belief that a person’s skills and aptitude can change with deliberate practice, rather than being inherently built-in. Engaging in The Learning Cycle requires a growth mindset, because mistakes are viewed as positive effectors of learning, rather than evidence of failure. Interventions that increase student’s growth mindset reduce the performance gap between historically disadvantaged and advantaged groups, and instructors who have growth mindset have smaller performance gaps between historically disadvantaged and advantaged groups in their classrooms.

My physics instructor’s instinct to offer a “points-back” assignment is a great way to engage students in The Learning Cycle: students try by taking the exam, we receive useful feedback on the exam, and we get to try again by completing the points-back assignment.

But she didn’t offer it! Because it would take too much time.

Effective & equitable teaching costs time, and time costs money

The interventions I listed above all take instructor time. While growth mindset interventions don’t necessarily take much time, implementing active learning and designing high-structure courses can be very time-intensive. To implement active learning, I need to write or design my own classroom activities, or take the time to find, sort, and adapt activities from online. To implement a high-structure course, I need to assign regular homework assignments - which means writing them myself or finding, sorting, and adapting resources from online - and I need to write and grade frequent low-stakes quizzes. Additionally, if I’ve structured my grading system to support The Learning Cycle, I need to provide quality feedback on student work so they can make revisions or retry attempts, which I also need to grade. Whew, I’m exhausted just writing it all.

My physics instructor has a learner-centered instinct – to offer a “points-back” assignment that would engage students in The Learning Cycle – but she doesn’t have the time to grade it, so she doesn’t offer it.

She doesn’t have the time because she teaches as an adjunct. An adjunct position is a part-time, contractual position; she is only teaching one course at my community college this semester. I also teach as an adjunct there, so I know about how much she makes: roughly $4000 for a full semester (7 hours per week in the classroom & lab). I don’t know if she’s teaching elsewhere, but I do know people who assemble several adjunct positions per semester at multiple institutions just to make a living. If she assembled 4 adjunct positions per semester, including summer term, she would make $48,000 per year without benefits. If she did that, she would be expected to spend 28 hours per week in the classroom/lab with students, which doesn’t include the time to commute to each institution, time for course prep, grading, setting up the course on the Learning Management System, or other administrative tasks. No wonder she doesn’t have the time to offer extra graded assignments in our course!

Let’s be clear where the blame lies here: it’s not on her, it’s on an academic system that undervalues and underpays VITAL instructors (Visiting, Instructors, Temporary, Adjunct, and Lecturers). Of course, it’s not enough to pay our instructors more or reduce full-time instructors’ teaching loads. Faculty need to know what practices are most impactful for improving student learning and equity in the classroom, and they need the tools to implement them well.

But when the labor to create high-structure, active-learning-centered classrooms is uncompensated and unrewarded, change will be minimal at best. And when it comes, it will be carried on the backs of educators who have the passion and the privilege to invest extra time and energy, often at the cost of their own work-life balance.

I want to hope that the system can be different. I want to hope that institutions can advance effective and equitable teaching, not only by offering professional development opportunities, but by actually compensating instructors for the time and effort it takes to make their classrooms into more effective and equitable learning environments. In most US higher education systems, this is not the norm.

A brief plug: My textbook will reduce the time-load for effective and equitable teaching

I’m writing a new General Biology textbook, and one of the things I want the textbook to do is reduce the time-load for instructors to engage in the high-impact teaching strategies we know improve learning and classroom equity. Here’s how:

Active Learning Activities. Our (digital-first) textbook will include an “Instructor Edition” that includes a curated list of active learning activities that align with the learning objectives of each chapter. We plan to make it as easy as possible for instructors to find, choose, and implement active learning activities from our resource library, so they don’t have to spend time writing them or searching online for relevant activities.

High-structure course. The textbook will incorporate formative assessment questions with immediate feedback to help students engage in meaningful practice while they read2. Additionally, our online homework platform will include thousands of high-quality homework questions that are easily assignable by instructors to engage students in meaningful practice after class. Finally, we plan to provide a robust test bank that includes questions instructors can use on frequent low stakes assessments.

I don’t like the way it sounds like I’m trying to sell you something, because it feels like I have an ulterior (financial) motive. The truth is, I know how much time it takes to design a high-structure course with lots of active learning, and I want to make it as easy as possible for other instructors to do the same. Writing a textbook with these types of resources is one way I can help do that.

Our textbook isn’t published yet, and it won’t be for another few years. But if you want to receive email updates, review opportunities, or get exclusive previews of the material, you can sign up here.

Not everything you read on the internet was written by a human. For full transparency, here is how I used AI to help me write this post:

I asked Claude to help me brainstorm ways to write the sentence “But when the labor to create high-structure, active-learning-centered classrooms…” Claude’s suggestions stimulated my thinking about what I wanted to say in that sentence, but all of the writing in this post, including that sentence, was written by me.

I have been using Alternative Grading approaches in my community college classroom for over 5 years. I started altering my grading approach after reading the book Grading for Equity by Joe Feldman. In response to some of the ideas in his book, I started using Multiple Grading Schemes. In this post, I explain what Multiple Grading Schemes is and why I think it’s more equitable than traditional grading.

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Which is more equitable: Including homework in the final course grade, or not?

In Grading for Equity, Feldman makes the argument that a student’s final course grade should only represent a student’s demonstrated learning. The final course grade should not, he argues, include grades from activities that promote learning, like homework, practice quizzes, or draft submissions. (For the remainder of this post I’ll use the term “homework” to mean any type of graded activity whose primary purpose is to help students practice new skills or reinforce concepts, but is not intended to determine students’ mastery of the content.) Since learning is a mistake-making process, students should be able to make mistakes on homework without being penalized for it in their final course grade. His reasoning is this: Imagine a student, Charlie, who makes many mistakes on his homework but another student, Brandon, makes almost no mistakes at all. However, Charlie learns from his mistakes. On the exam, both Charlie and Brandon perform well. Using traditional grading, Charlie’s lower homework score will be averaged with his exam score, resulting in a lower final course grade than Brandon, even though both Brandon and Charlie exhibited the same level of content mastery on the exam. This is not equitable, because the same demonstration of learning earns different grades. Thus, Feldman argues, an equitable grading system is one where the final course grade includes only “summative” assessment scores like those from tests, exams, and other final projects.

The problem with Feldman’s argument is that if you remove grades for homework, many students won’t do that work. That hurts those students, because they don’t benefit from doing the learning-promoting activities that the homework is designed to guide students through. For this reason, in their book Inclusive Teaching: Strategies for Promoting Equity in the College Classroom, Kelly Hogan and Viji Sathy argue that homework should be included in the final course grade. They reference research (Freeman et al. 2011, Eddy & Hogan 2014) showing that high-structure courses, which implement weekly graded homework assignments and regular low-stakes testing, increase scores for all students, but especially benefit traditionally-disadvantaged groups like racial/ethnic minorities and first-generation college students. Thus, in the name of equity, Hogan & Sathy make the opposite argument from Feldman: they say that homework should be included in the final course grade.

As instructors, what should we do? Include homework in the final course grade, or not?

I split the difference and do both. Here’s how.

What is Multiple Grading Schemes?

The premise of Multiple Grading Schemes is simple: rather than having one grading scheme that weights different components of the course differently, use multiple grading schemes with different weights for the different components of the course. Here are a couple examples.

In the Math class shown above, scheme 1 is “test heavy,” with 70% of the final grade based on tests and the final exam, whereas scheme 3 is “test light” with only 35% of the final grade based on tests and the final exam.

In my Biology class, scheme 1 includes all the components of the course, including homework and online quizzes, whereas schemes 2 and 3 don’t include those components at all. Additionally, schemes 2 and 3 flip the relative weight of the two major types of assessments: the final exam and essay exams, which probe students’ mastery of the material in very different ways. Students may excel at showing mastery using one format more than the other, so I offer two grading schemes that heavily weight one or the other type of assessment.

At the end of the semester each student’s grade is calculated using each grading scheme, and they get the best grade. This is important: students do not choose which grading scheme applies to them, because that could unfairly privilege students who are better at predicting how their semester will go if they choose at the start of the semester, or are more math-savvy if they choose at the end.

By using Multiple Grading Schemes, I split the difference between including homework and not including it because one grading scheme includes homework and two don’t. In the math class, while homework is included in every scheme, homework (and labs, which are more like homework than assessments) are weighted more heavily in some schemes and less heavily in others. This way, students can still be rewarded for doing the homework, so the motivation to do it is still there, but students will not be penalized in the grade if they struggle to consistently complete the homework.

(Aside: I buy Feldman’s argument that since learning is a mistake-making process, students should be able to make mistakes on homework without being penalized for it in their final course grade. For this reason, I only grade homework on completion [I made a video about it!]. In the math classes at my institution, the homework is graded on correctness, but students have multiple retry opportunities for each assignment.)

Thus, Multiple Grading Schemes is a way of providing multiple paths to success for students. They can be rewarded for consistent, diligent performance on homework and other activities that promote learning, but they don’t have to be penalized for poor performance on homework because other grading schemes weight assessments more heavily. Multiple paths to success is, theoretically, more equitable because it means students with different strengths can have their strengths recognized using different grading schemes.

Is Multiple Grading Schemes more equitable?

Let’s start with what it means to be “more equitable.”

In a 2024 paper, researchers analyzed a large dataset of student grades in university-level Science, Technology, Engineering & Math (STEM) classes. They found that students with more Systemic Advantages had higher grades, on average, than their peers with fewer Systemic Advantages. They define Systemic Advantages as: being white, male, continuing generation and from a higher-income background.

These data tell us that STEM education at the University level is not equitable. An equitable system would not have these grade disparities based on identity or background.

While the data above are from 6 large research-intensive universities, we see the same trends based on race at my institution (a community college in NC). Here are average course grades from all math courses at my community college, broken down by students’ self-reported race. I’ve highlighting white, Hispanic, and Black demographics because together they represent 85% of our math students1.

Based on these data, an equitable policy would be one that helps to level the playing field. It isn’t that Blackness makes students bad at math; rather, there is something about the system that makes it harder for Black students to earn high grades in math classes. An equitable policy is one that changes the system to reduce, or eliminate, that barrier.

Back to Multiple Grading Schemes: is it more equitable than a single grading scheme?

Luckily, there’s data to help answer that question. In the Fall of 2021 all of the math and physics classes at my community college started using Multiple Grading Schemes. As a result, after 3 years of implementation we now have final course grades from over 2500 students whose grade was determined using Multiple Grading Schemes. My colleagues and I are analyzing those data and writing it up for publication, so I won’t go into many details here. But here’s one major punchline:

For all the math and physics classes, grading scheme 2 is the “original” grading scheme. Grading schemes 1 (“test heavy”) and 3 (“test light”) were added as part of implementing Multiple Grading Schemes. When we look to see which students got a higher letter grade in either scheme 1 or 3 (in other words, they would have gotten a lower grade if we had only used the original grading scheme), we see that more Black and Hispanic students get a higher grade because we implemented Multiple Grading Schemes. Importantly, no students saw their grade go down because of Multiple Grading Schemes. Also, since grades are not curved in any of the math and physics classes, the fact that some students’ grades were bumped up had no cost to other students’ grades.

Note that Multiple Grading Schemes is applied equally to all students - there is no differential treatment here based on race - yet the grading system especially benefits students who are systemically disadvantaged in STEM classes. This is exactly what we would expect an equitable policy to look like in our current system.

If you’re curious why we see this result, we are too! Stayed tuned for our paper where we dive into the data to find out what’s going on.2

One last thing: I made a video about Multiple Grading Schemes, which includes some tips for implementation that I don’t mention here. Check it out:

Not everything you read on the internet was written by a human. For full transparency, here is how I used AI to help me write this post:

I drafted the entire post, then I asked Claude to give me feedback on the draft. Specifically, I asked for feedback on ways to reduce redundancy and to identify areas that need more clarity. I made changes based on some of its feedback. All of the text in this post was written entirely by me.

This semester, I’m taking a physics class at my local community college. My goal is to remember what it’s like to be a novice in a science course, so I can become a better educator and a better textbook author.

It is super interesting being in the student role again after spending years teaching, attending teaching-related conferences, participating in teaching related professional development opportunities, and reading books and papers about education. I know a lot about teaching “best practices,” but being a student again is teaching me a lot about teaching and learning in the classroom.

This semester I’ll be writing about the insights I gain by being a student again.

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The “Think” in Think-Pair-Share Takes Time

In my physics class, my instructor intersperses periods of lecture with “Think-Pair-Share” activities. Think-Pair-Share is one of myriad activities to engage students in Active Learning, an approach that has been shown to increase student performance and increase equity in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) classrooms. By incorporating Active Learning activities in a lecture-based course, students get to practice the hard work that builds learning (recalling concepts, solving problems, making connections, etc) while getting immediate class-wide feedback from the instructor. I’m a big fan of Active Learning and I use it in my classroom all the time.

Think-Pair-Share works like this: The instructor poses a question or problem to the class, and students take time to Think about it, then they talk with a neighbor (“Pair”), then the instructor asks one or two students to Share what they discussed. By responding to students’ discussion points, the instructor provides immediate feedback to the class, helping to clarify misconceptions, explain concepts, etc.

I use Think-Pair-Share extensively in my own classroom, but for the first time in 15 years, I’m on the student side of Think-Pair-Share.1 Here’s what I notice.

When the instructor puts up the first Think-Pair-Share question, it takes time for my brain to switch from listening mode to thinking mode. I am an attentive student – I’m not tired during class, I’m not distracted by my phone – and still, when I’ve been sitting through a longer period (30 or 40 minutes) of the instructor talking, when she puts up the first Think-Pair-Share question, I have a moment of free-fall and I find myself asking, “Wait, what am I supposed to be doing?” It takes a little time, maybe 5-10 seconds, for my brain to settle into the mindset that I have work to do. I call this the Switch-to-Thinking-Mode time delay.

(Interestingly, when my instructor poses a series of Think-Pair-Share questions, I only experience the Switch-to-Thinking-Mode time delay for the first question in the series. As an educator, I’m quite curious whether the Switch-to-Thinking-Mode time delay is affected by how often Active Learning activities are deployed in a lecture-based class. In other words, is there a Switch-to-Thinking-Mode time delay after a 5-minute mini-lecture, or only after a 30-minute chunk of lecture? This has implications for whether it’s better to intersperse separate Active Learning Activities every few minutes in lecture, or clump them together between longer periods of lecture.)

Once I’ve gotten into “thinking mode,” it then takes time for me to think! I have to read the question on the slide (that takes time), and think about what the answer is (which also takes time). Sometimes my instructor talks after putting up the question – she’ll explain the question or relate it to something we just talked about in lecture – and when she does that, I can’t think about the question because my brain is focused on listening to her.

During my training as an educator, I learned that it’s important to allocate time for all three parts of Think-Pair-Share. But in my classroom, I know I’ve cut short the “Think” part and jumped straight to telling students to talk about the problem with their peers. But thinking takes time! And some students need more time than others to think. By carving out dedicated “thinking” time, the instructor gives all students a chance to engage meaningfully in the active learning activity, and therefore benefit from it. I knew all that intellectually, but it’s quite impactful to experience it from the student side – I will definitely be more deliberate about creating silent “thinking time” when I engage students in active learning activities in the future.

The “Pair” is Awkward When You Don’t Know Your Neighbors

For the “Pair” part of Think-Pair-Share, I’m supposed to turn to a neighbor and talk to them about the problem posed by the instructor. On a practical level, I have found this to be quite awkward – do I turn to my left or right, or talk to the person sitting in front of or behind me? Everyone is a stranger; I don’t know anyone’s name. Choosing who to talk to adds time to the Think-Pair-Share. Maybe this will become more natural and take less figuring-out time as the semester progresses, but in the first couple weeks of class, this has been awkward and clunky.

In my own classroom, I assign students to half-semester-long teams of 4-5 students. I designate a little class time in the first couple weeks for students to get to know their teammates. I hope that structuring my course this way helps reduce the barrier to talking with peers during discussion-based Active Learning activities like Think-Pair-Share. But without being a student in a course structured like that, I can only comment on what I hear from my students,2 not what the experience is like from the student’s perspective.

I’m learning so much by being a student again, it’s quite fun. Oh, and I’m learning physics,3 which is also fun! I didn’t know until last week that falling objects fall faster and faster, i.e. falling is accelerating. I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I didn’t know that, but hey, we all have something to learn right?

Thanks for joining me on this learning journey!

Not everything you read on the internet was written by a human. For full transparency, here is how I used AI to help me write this post:

I used Claude to help me brainstorm titles and subtitles for this post. I did not use AI in any capacity to write the body of the post.

Yesterday, I sat as a student in a class for the first time in 15 years. I’m enrolled in Introductory Physics at my local community college (the same community college where I teach Introductory Biology, though I’m not teaching this year). I’m taking the course for two reasons:

1. To learn physics. I’ve never taken a physics class!

2. To reacquaint myself with the experience of being a novice in an introductory science course.

Number 2 is especially important to me right now as I embark on writing a textbook for Introductory Biology students. I need to be able to balance deep disciplinary knowledge with the ability to make the content approachable and accessible to novice learners. The more I learn about biology, the farther away I get from the novice experience! I’m hopeful that being a novice in a physics class will provide insights that are transferable to both my writing and teaching.

Over the next semester, I’ll share my insights here.

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Define discipline-specific jargon, especially early in the course

This one seems obvious when teaching novice students, but, in the student role yesterday, I experienced it in a new way.

My instructor was explaining how we talk about phenomena that occur on very different scales of size. She put up a slide showing a list of objects and their size. The first object in the table was “size of a nucleus.”

I automatically assumed “nucleus” meant the nucleus of a cell. I spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to figure out why the size of a nucleus would be listed as smaller than an atom. Eventually, I figured out that we were talking about the nucleus of an atom.

I’m a cell biologist by training, so of course I assumed that the term “nucleus” referred to a cell nucleus. While most undergraduates are not experts in a discipline like I am, they do take a variety of courses at the same time. They are constantly transitioning from one discipline to another, sometimes within the same hour. It’s completely feasible that a student would come to my classroom, or open my textbook, directly after attending a chemistry or physics course where the word “nucleus” always refers to the nucleus of an atom.

Now, I don’t think I need to specify “the nucleus of a cell” every time I refer to the nucleus in my textbook or in my classroom. But I do think it’s important to consider students’ experiences – not just as novices, but as students who are learning other disciplines concomitantly, where similar language may have different meanings. And I think it’s especially important to do this early in the course when we are inviting students in. By explicitly defining jargon and norms, I’m imagining that my textbook and classroom will say, “Welcome to the discipline! Come in, let me show you around.”

Be careful with language that implies students’ prior knowledge

Using jargon without defining it assumes students’ prior knowledge implicitly, there are explicit, possibly detrimental, ways of assuming prior knowledge that we should be careful with.

During my physics class yesterday, my instructor was explaining the additive property of vectors as it applied to velocity. She said, “remember to arrange the vectors tip to tail,” though this was the first time she mentioned it. She did go on to explain what she meant, but that one word, “remember” made it sound like she expected us to know that detail already.1 I can imagine this assumption of prior knowledge could feel alienating for a student who is already intimidated by the topic (hello STEM courses!) or who is especially challenged by the material.

There are several words that have the same effect: “Remember,” or “obviously” or “clearly” all imply that certain knowledge should already be in the student’s brain or is so self-evident that it doesn’t need explaining. Not only can this reduce a student’s sense of self-efficacy (self-efficacy = a feeling that “I can do this!”), but it can suppress question-asking. If the instructor has just said, “Obviously XYZ,” it would require a lot of courage for a student to then step up and say, “Wait, can you explain X? It’s not obvious to me.”

I’m sure I do this in my classroom by accident. I know from a past experience that I can easily assume background knowledge that my audience doesn’t have.2 But yesterday’s physics class helped me remember what it’s like to be on the receiving end of that assumption. Going forward, in both my writing and in my classroom, I’m mentally tagging the words, “Remember,” “Obviously,” and “Clearly.” Before I blurt them out and potentially alienate my students, I want to make sure that I really mean to use them.

Are there other terms like these that assume a certain amount of background knowledge? Share them in the comments!

I’m looking forward to learning about physics this semester, remembering what it’s like to be novice in a STEM classroom, and sharing my insights with you here.

Not everything you read on the internet was written by a human. For full transparency, here is how I used AI to help me write this post:

I used Gemini to generate the image of the spherical cow at the top. I used Claude to review the text of my draft and provide feedback; its only suggestion that I took was to use the subtitle “what my first day back as a student taught me about being a better teacher.” All of the text in the main part of the post was written entirely by me.

Part 1: Texting with Laura

Last Thursday morning, I was texting with my friend Laura Paul who was traveling for a conference. She asked me how I was feeling (I had a bad cough) and I asked her how the conference was going. She replied about her dinner with colleagues and then the three bouncing dots indicated she was writing more, so I switched to another app to wait for her reply.

When Laura’s text came in, she encouraged me to see a doctor because there was a pneumonia outbreak in our area. This was slightly odd; Laura Paul’s expertise is in agricultural economics, not epidemiology, but I didn’t think much about it. I quickly fired back a series of texts (missing an autocorrect of doc to dog, then riffing on that mistake).

After going to the doctor (I did, in fact, have pneumonia), I went back to the text thread to thank Laura for her suggestion, but the whole conversation was missing. There was just her text about her meal with colleagues. I was mystified – what had happened to our entire conversation?

Then it dawned on me: While texting with Laura Paul, my other friend, Laura Paye (who is a primary care physician) texted me about the pneumonia outbreak. Because I was expecting a text from Laura Paul, I didn’t pay much attention to the name when Laura Paye texted me!

My mistake sunk into me with horror, and I immediately went back to my text thread with Laura Paye to see if I had said anything inappropriate. Laura Paul and I can have some pretty silly, sometimes tongue-in-cheek interactions over text (hence the dog + stethoscope emojis), and I was worried I had fired off some joke that would have been weird with Laura Paye. But it was fine. Laura Paye never needed to know that I thought she was Laura Paul when I texted with her!1

But that feeling – the “oh no, did I act inappropriately when I thought the situation was X but it was really Y?” – I have had that feeling in the classroom before, and I want to share it because I think it reveals implicit bias where it is usually well hidden.

Part 2: The case of two Taylors

I met Taylor in my Spring 2021 General Biology I course (48 students). Because of the pandemic, the course was all online, with weekly synchronous online meetings. For privacy reasons, I never asked my students to turn on their cameras. Taylor engaged in our synchronous course meetings through the chat and kept in regular contact with me via email, but I never saw her. She was an engaged student, though she ended up failing the course.

The next semester, Fall 2021, Taylor enrolled in my General Biology I course again – this time (for the first time since the pandemic began) in-person!

I remember meeting a Taylor on the first day of class, but that Taylor was a man, not a woman. I remember thinking, “Oh I must have two Taylors this semester!” The roster can change at the last minute, and I wasn’t sure if my printed roster was up to date when class started. This was a class with multiple duplicate names – a John and a Jon, two sisters with the same last name – so I wasn’t phased by the prospect of two Taylors: the man I had just met, and the woman from my online course last spring who appeared to be absent on the first day of class.

But when class finished that day, I went back to check the roster online and there was only one Taylor – the same name from my spring online course. That’s when it hit me: there were not two Taylors, just the one – a man. For some reason, all of spring semester I had assumed Taylor was a woman, but he was actually a man.

Then, just like my realization when texting with Laura Paye, I had that horrified feeling: During the entirety of the spring semester – in all of our emails and all of our interactions in the chat during the synchronous online meetings – did I treat Taylor inappropriately given that he was actually a man and not a woman like I had assumed?

As a woman who navigated a PhD with a male PI and an all-male PhD committee, and who was often the only woman to ask a question at science seminars during my postdoc at MIT, I am acutely aware of gender bias in STEM. I work hard to convey to my students that anyone can be a scientist2, and I work hard to see the potential in all of my students, regardless of their gender, race, socioeconomic background, sexual orientation, or any other identity.

But also, I remembered this: At one point during the spring semester, as I lingered after an online class meeting that had been about cellular respiration and how organisms gain and lose mass, Taylor wrote in the chat about struggling to gain weight and feeling really thin. I remember having the flash thought, “Oh poor girl, you’re model-thin, how awful” before I checked myself. I’m pretty sure I responded with something about how different bodies are different – some are thin, some are not, and that’s ok. But – full transparency here – I had that initial, judgy thought, thinking that it was a little rich for a very skinny woman to be complaining about being skinny in a society that exalts skinniness in women.

Of course, skinniness in men is not exalted in our society. Ursula, the sea witch from Disney’s 1989 movie The Little Mermaid, illustrates this sexist bias in her song “Poor Unfortunate Souls:”

In our society, thinness is exalted in women, but not in men, and that bias is ingrained in me, even though I actively don’t believe it on a cognitive level.

Would I have responded differently to Taylor’s complaint about being too thin if I had known he was man? I’m not sure. But I do know I would have thought differently. And that, dear reader, is what implicit bias looks like.

Part 3: How to reduce the impact of implicit bias in the classroom

You might see my story about Taylor and say, “Well, nice job, you checked yourself and didn’t let your knee-jerk thought come through in your actions.” Well, yes, but how many other times has my implicit bias affected my thinking, and in turn, affected my actions in ways that did affect my students directly?

The thing about implicit bias is that it is implicit, which means you usually aren’t aware that it’s even there. But we all have it. Being raised in a society means your mental frameworks have been shaped by that society’s values, expectations, and biases – the good, the bad, and the ugly. Implicit bias is a part of your thinking, whether you like it or not.

I teach at a community college, so I work with an especially diverse student population. I worry about how my implicit biases might “act out” in the classroom, unintentionally advantaging or disadvantaging certain students. I know that I can’t catch or correct every implicit bias that might rise up in my mind (again, it is implicit), so I work hard to build structures that help to bias-proof my courses, especially my grading policies. Here are some of the things I do, and why.

Problem 1: Case-by-Case Decisions

Making “case-by-case” decisions about extraordinary circumstances is a prime opportunity for implicit bias to act out. To avoid making case-by-case decisions, I use structured policies to deal with most of the situations that typically need case-by-case decisions.

Late Work

I created a structured late work policy using tokens so I don’t have to decide whether to accept late work. Every type of assignment has a late work policy that is stated in the syllabus that explicitly describes how I will handle late work for that type of assignment. This eliminates most of my case-by-case decision making. I describe my late work policy in more detail in this blog post and I talk about a variety of equitable late work approaches in this 25-minute presentation.

Absences

Before the semester starts, I plan for how I will handle it if a student needs to miss an exam or lab day. This way, when a student writes about an emergency that keeps them from class on an important day, I lean on policies I’ve already crafted rather than creating a (possibly-bias-influenced) exception for that one student. I never include attendance in the grade, because it harms students.

Problem 2: Judging Student Performance

Making a judgment call about a student’s performance is another opportunity for implicit bias to act out. I try to avoid making judgment calls about student performance, and when I do, I use anonymous submissions.

Participation

Looking at a classroom and making a call about who is, and isn’t, participating is a bias-prone activity. I’m more likely to notice the contributions of some students compared to others, and I’m more likely to think some behaviors constitute participation relative to others. I don’t grade for participation anymore, but when I did, I made sure to use objective measures of participation, like clicker responses, exit question submissions, or responding to forum posts online. Other options include having students self-assess by identifying the ways they have participated in class.

Grading Student Work

Extensive research has shown that when instructors know the identity (or presumed identity) of the student who submitted an assignment, they grade otherwise equal performance more harshly for certain identities. To avoid the impact of my implicit biases when I grade student work, I have students submit work anonymously. This works best for one-off assignments and becomes harder to implement when working with students on progressive assignments that build on previous feedback. Of course, some types of assessment – like oral exams – are impossible to do anonymously. But where it is feasible, anonymous submissions can substantially reduce the impact of implicit bias in grading.

This last point - making a judgment call about a student’s performance is an opportunity for implicit bias to act out – is why I am particularly suspicious of the equity impacts of ungrading and collaborative grading. I’ve written more about that here.

I am human, and I teach humans, and it is impossible to eliminate my implicit biases from the classroom. Sometimes I think the benefit of, say, doing oral exams, outweighs the potential negative impact from my implicit biases. But I still think it’s important to recognize the ways that implicit bias can act out in the classroom, and work to build course structures that reduce that impact as much as possible.

Not everything you read on the internet was written by a human. For full transparency, here is how I used AI to help me write this post:

I did not use AI in any way for this blog post.

This is work I’m really excited about because I’ve been frustrated for years with the textbooks that are currently available for General Biology. There are numerous calls to action in the Biology Education community to teach fewer details, focus more on core concepts, and incorporate more scientific reasoning into the biology curriculum – all of which I agree with! But I’ve found it really hard to teach this way using current General Biology textbooks, which tend to be massive compendia of facts and concepts that sideline scientific reasoning to the first chapter or to “discovery boxes” outside of the main text.

In search of a good General Biology textbook, I have used 4 different textbooks since I started teaching Gen Bio in 2013. None of them hit the mark on balancing facts and concepts with scientific reasoning at a level that I felt was appropriate for my (mostly community college) students.

Eventually, in 2022 I quit using textbooks altogether and developed my own curriculum. That curriculum laid the groundwork for our textbook’s overarching vision.

Do we really need another General Biology textbook?

My co-author, Gaël McGill, and I think so. Gaël is a scientific visualizations and storytelling expert1 and we think our new book will serve students better than anything currently available. Here’s how:

Less stuff, more science.

Current General Biology textbooks sideline scientific reasoning to focus on discrete details and facts. In our textbook, we emphasize core biology concepts in concert with scientific reasoning competencies through data-centered narratives.

A narrative-driven approach.

Each of our 8 Units centers on a compelling narrative that ties the chapters together. Rather than present scientific topics as strictly discrete sub-disciplinary units (i.e. cell biology, evolution, etc.), we explore the topics that relate to each Unit’s central narrative, integrating concepts from across the discipline.

Learning through repetition.

Our narrative approach lets us revisit core concepts in varied contexts to reinforce essential ideas. We offer optional “primers” that summarize key ideas from previous chapters to support application of prior concepts in new contexts.

Approachability.

We intentionally use a conversational style of writing to make the text approachable. Jargon is introduced judiciously, and data figures are carefully explained to scaffold data and visual literacy. We assume no biology background of our readers.

Centering diversity, equity & inclusion.

Our narratives center people and scientists from diverse backgrounds, and we carefully address controversial topics in society like the apparent conflict between evolution and religion, the lack of a genetic basis for race, and others.

Engaging students at every stage of the learning process.

We provide multiple ways for students to thoughtfully engage with the material during the learning process:

• with interactive questions throughout the chapter that provide immediate feedback,

• through a rich collection of online homework questions that scaffold students’ integration of core concepts and competencies,

• by providing chapter-relevant active learning activities in an instructor-only version, we make it easy for instructors to employ classroom activities that support deeper learning.

Cutting-edge multimedia in a unified digital experience.

Our digital-first text will seamlessly integrate scientifically accurate multimedia designed to meet learning objectives and support diverse learners.

I’m really, really excited about our textbook. I think a textbook that does all these things will help students be better prepared for future biology classes, will help students be better informed citizens, and will engage and retain more students from diverse backgrounds. I can’t wait to see it in action.

If you want to stay in the loop about our textbook, you can sign up here to receive email updates, review opportunities, exclusive previews of the material, and to join our Early Access Instructor group for the text. 

Why I’m not teaching right now

I’m taking a “sabbatical” from teaching this year as we get this project off the ground. The textbook is expected to be a five-year(-ish) project, and I absolutely think it’s critical for me to be in the classroom as I write. Working closely with students makes me a better author because I have a better sense of their questions, preconceptions, interests, and more. So I definitely want to be in the classroom as I work on this project.

But for this first year, as I figure out what my writing and researching rhythms look like, I appreciate having the opportunity to focus solely on the textbook. (It’s also been deliciously nice to have time to exercise every day!) 10/10 recommend taking a sabbatical to those who have that option.

(It’s worth noting that I’m calling it a “sabbatical,” but really I’m just taking time off from teaching. Because I teach as an adjunct, I have the flexibility to simply not take on a new contract for one or two semesters. [This opportunity brought to you by the privilege of having a life partner who can financially support our family.])

Stay tuned for more! This is going to be an exciting adventure.

Excited about our textbook and want to receive email updates, review opportunities, exclusive previews of the material, and/or to join our Early Access Instructor group for the text? Sign up here!

It was my first semester teaching at a community college, and I was proctoring the first exam. About 20 minutes in, sitting in front of the quiet classroom, I got an email. It was from Diana (pseudonym), a student enrolled in the course who was absent that day and thus missing the exam.  It read something like this:

Hey Dr. Dyer I’m in the parking lot with my daughter my mom said she’d meet me here to take care of her but she’s not here yet so I’m just waiting I don’t want to miss the exam but I don’t know what else to do

I couldn’t invite Diana to bring her kid into the classroom1, though I wished I could. Diana ended up coming into class about 30 or 40 minutes late. She did her best to complete the exam in the time remaining, but she didn’t do well; her tardiness cost her! And I didn’t even have a late or no-show policy that would have docked points simply because she was late.

For a secret project2 I’m working on, I recently reviewed a couple dozen General Biology syllabi from wide-ranging institutions. Several courses included attendance in the grade, but one was particularly striking. In this 2022 community college syllabus, 20% of the total course grade is based on attendance, which is determined like this:

0 lateness, 0 absence: 100%

1-2 absences: 80%

3-4 absences: 50%

5 absences or more: 0%

2 latenesses = 1 absence

If I’m reading this policy correctly, missing just one class means a student’s final grade would be reduced by 4% total. Missing three classes would result in a 10% (full letter grade) reduction! Let’s talk about why this is problematic.

Note: in the rest of this post I will only discuss grading for absences, but the same principles apply to grading for tardiness.

Grading for attendance hits students twice

When a student misses a class, they miss the opportunity to learn the content in class. In my experience, many students perform worse on the portion of the assessment related to what they missed. In this way, their grade already takes a hit when they are absent; this is, in parenting lingo, “natural consequences.”

Reducing their grade for the absence means their grade takes a second, additional hit.

Think about it this way – if a student misses a class, makes up what they missed and performs well on the assessment, should their grade really be lower than a student who attended class and performed equally as well on the assessment?

Some students are more likely to miss class than others

Students miss class – have to miss class sometimes – for a variety of reasons. Here is a non-exhaustive list of reasons my community college students have missed class:

• they are sick

• a dependent is sick

• they can’t find care for a young dependent

• they are, or a family member is, in an emergency situation like hospitalization, domestic violence, or a mental health crisis

• they have a doctor’s appointment they can’t move

• car troubles

The students that are more likely to experience these challenges are working students, students with dependents, students that come from unstable home or employment backgrounds, students with disabilities or mental health challenges – in other words, students who already face systemic barriers to success in college! Grading policies that penalize absences disproportionately harm them.

You might think, “but students can get their absences excused!”

I argue that having excused absence policies that require instructors to categorize students’ reasons as valid or invalid does more harm than good.

Why requiring an excuse is problematic

The syllabus I mentioned earlier specifically states:

No make-ups are given except at the discretion of the instructor pending submission of written proof of reason for absence.3

The statement is about missing exams or quizzes, but I’ll be generous and assume it applies to the participation/attendance score as well. Let’s unpack this statement piecemeal:

No make-ups are given except at the discretion of the instructor…

The “discretion of the instructor” will always be liable to bias, including implicit bias. Whether you accept a student’s excuse will be influenced by the way you were raised, the identities of the student and how they compare with your identities as well as privileged identities in society… even the stresses you’ve already dealt with that day (let’s be honest, whether I’ve had a snack recently or not!).

Because I was raised in America and therefore I have racist implicit biases, I know that I’m more likely to dismiss the excuse from a Black or brown student than a from white student. I can intentionally try to counter this bias, but it is an implicit bias, which means I won’t always notice it. This is structural inequity in action.

In response to these arguments, I’ve heard some instructors say, “I just give a pass to anyone to asks.” But this is still problematic, for two reasons:

1) Not all students are equally as likely to ask for an excuse. You may be a truly welcoming and open instructor, but your position of power will always pose a barrier for some students to reach out to ask for special circumstances.

2) Students shouldn’t have to share details of their personal life with you to be successful in your class.

… pending submission of written proof of reason for absence.

It is common to require written proof of a reason for an absence, especially doctor’s notes. But if you teach in the United States, where universal healthcare is not available, your students are not guaranteed access to a doctor! Furthermore, even if they do have health insurance, it can still be costly and time-consuming to see a doctor to get a written note.

Seriously: if a student is sick, they should stay home! One semester, during an in-class exam, one of my students kept getting up and going to the bathroom. When I asked him what was going on, he said he kept needing to vomit (!). I told him to go home. Frankly, I find it horrific that students have been trained so thoroughly not to miss an exam that they will come to class while vomiting.

But even for non-health related emergencies, what does written proof look like? Would you accept a note from a car mechanic? A parent? A neighbor? A friend? Again, we’re back to the problem of biases. There is no fair and equitable way to mete out judgment about which excuses are valid or not.

What to do instead

You want your students to be successful. You know that attending class is important. It’s tempting to use grades to incentivize students attending class on time, but I hope I’ve convinced you that grade-based attendance policies disproportionately harm certain students, and there is no way to equitably counter the harm with “excused absences” policies.

Here are some non-grade-related ways to incentivize attendance:

• make class exciting, fun, community-oriented, and explicitly relevant to the assessments so students have an internal motivation to attend

• show evidence from your own classes that students with better attendance tend to perform better on assessments

• reward students with stickers for good attendance

• mentor individual students, or refer them to administrators in mentoring positions, to help them navigate goal-setting and time management strategies

• contingency plan in advance how to handle students missing important class periods, like exam days, and communicate in advance what will happen if they miss one

• trust students to make, and learn from, their own decisions about how they spend their time

If you do have (or are required to have) a grade-based attendance policy, be sure to build in a no-questions-asked buffer that won’t dock the grade for a certain number of missed classes.

One final note: I didn’t mention grading for “participation,” because that’s its own can of worms, but if you do grade for participation, make sure it doesn’t function as a proxy for attendance.

Not everything you read on the internet was written by a human. For full transparency, here is how I used AI to help me write this post:

I conceptualized, outlined, and drafted the entire post. I copy-pasted my draft into Claude and asked it to help me reduce repetitive sections and tighten up the language to clarify my arguments. I made some of the edits it suggested, but not all!4