A brief introduction for faculty curious about moving beyond traditional letter grades
Most of us were educated under a familiar system: assignments turned in, points tallied, a letter grade reported. That system has a long history — grade recording at American universities dates to the late 1700s — but it is now drawing scrutiny from faculty across disciplines. Critics note that heavy emphasis on letter grades can discourage risk-taking, fail to account for different ways of demonstrating learning, and sometimes prioritize performance over genuine understanding.
Traditional grading practices in which students submit assignments and receive points that feed into a single letter grade have long served practical purposes in higher education such as communicating student performance to outside audiences, satisfying institutional reporting requirements, and providing a shared shorthand for academic achievement. At its best, a grade signals to students where they stand and motivates them to engage with course material. At its worst, traditional grading can undermine the very learning it aims to measure. Research suggests that extrinsic rewards like grades can actually reduce intrinsic motivation, discourage intellectual risk-taking, and shift students’ focus from genuine understanding to score accumulation (Schinske & Tanner, 2014).
Grades can also be surprisingly unreliable, influenced by factors like grader inconsistency, implicit bias, and the conflation of learning with compliance. This raises real questions about what a letter grade actually tells us about what a student knows. Traditional or standard grading practices generally do not allow for students to revise or receive meaningful feedback, practices that encourage deeper learning (Clark & Talbert, 2023).
Dissatisfaction with traditional grading surfaced periodically throughout the twentieth century, particularly during the progressive education movements of the 1960s and 1970s. But it was not until the 1990s and 2000s that researchers began building a sustained empirical case for rethinking grades, examining their effects on motivation, equity, and learning. In the last decade, that scholarship has translated into a growing faculty movement, accelerated by the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic, that has brought alternative grading approaches from the margins into mainstream conversations about teaching and learning (Eyler, 2024).
Alternative grading practices don’t ask you to abandon all structure. They ask a slightly different question: What do grades actually tell us about student learning, and how might we do that better? While there are several unique approaches and varying degrees of implementation, the common aims are to increase student engagement in their own learning while promoting a more learner-centered environment.
CSU's Alternative Grading Community of Practice
The Institute for Learning and Teaching at CSU supports faculty in exploring alternative grading practices. Visit the TILT Alternative Grading Community of Practice for workshops, resources, and connection with colleagues doing this work on campus.
Read posts by CSU faculty members on their own alternative grading practices:
What if changing how you grade could make you actually enjoy teaching again? Three CSU faculty — Molly Gutilla (Public Health), Alyson Huff (Philosophy), and Jess Rushing (Music Therapy) — along with Front Range Community College’s Mark Hussey, set out to answer that question. Writing in Grading for Growth, they share how abandoning points-based grading didn’t just benefit their students — it reignited their passion for the classroom, replaced conflict with collaboration, and restored a sense of purpose in their work.
Standards-Based Grading Six Years Later
What does standards-based grading actually look like after six years of real-world use in a large, multi-section calculus course? In this Grading for Growth post, CSU’s own Hilary Freeman shares the practical lessons, unexpected pivots, and hard-won simplifications that have shaped her approach — including one change she calls her current favorite.
Common Approaches
Below are six of the most discussed methods in higher education today. Each has a different emphasis, a different fit, and a different learning curve.
Standards-based grading evaluates student performance against a defined set of learning standards or objectives, rather than through accumulated points or peer comparison. Each standard represents a specific skill or area of knowledge drawn directly from course goals. Students receive feedback indicating their level of proficiency on each standard — often using a scale such as “beginning,” “developing,” “proficient,” and “exemplary” — so that grades reflect where a student stands relative to clear benchmarks rather than how much work they completed or how they ranked among classmates.
Opportunities
- Gives students a granular, skill-by-skill picture of their progress over time
- Directly connects grading to course learning objectives, supporting program alignment
- Multi-level proficiency scales capture growth along the way, not just at the end
Trade-Offs
- Identifying and articulating meaningful standards for every course requires substantial planning
- Tracking proficiency across multiple standards and students can be complex without dedicated tools
- Translating proficiency levels into traditional letter grades (when required) involves judgment calls
Ungrading deemphasizes or removes points and letter grades, replacing them with rich, individualized feedback and student self-assessment. The goal is to refocus students on learning rather than score-chasing. It tends to work best in smaller classes — humanities, social sciences, and the arts — where frequent written feedback is feasible. It requires more upfront communication with students about expectations, but instructors who use it often report meaningful shifts in student engagement and intellectual risk-taking.
Opportunities
- Promotes intrinsic motivation and genuine curiosity over grade-chasing
- Encourages intellectual risk-taking and deeper engagement with material
- Fosters collaboration over competition among students
- Supports more holistic, individualized assessment of student growth
Trade-offs
- High feedback demands can be difficult to sustain in large courses
- Students accustomed to traditional grading may feel uncertain or resistant
- Consistency and objectivity can be harder to demonstrate to stakeholders
- May not suit first-year students still building study skills and self-regulation
In team grading, a group of students receives a shared grade for a collaborative project or task. The emphasis is on the quality of collective work rather than individual performance. This approach is a natural fit for project-based courses in any discipline where teamwork is itself a learning objective. Instructors often pair team grades with individual reflection components to ensure accountability.
Opportunities
- Builds real-world collaboration, communication, and group problem-solving skills
- Reduces the overall grading burden for instructors
- Can mirror authentic professional environments where shared outcomes matter
- Encourages peer accountability and mutual support within groups
Trade-offs
- Unequal contribution (“free rider” effect) can frustrate students and skew grades
- A single shared grade may not accurately reflect individual learning
- Group conflict or incompatible schedules can impede performance
- Requires careful group formation and clear shared expectations
Competency grading evaluates students based on whether they have demonstrated a predetermined level of proficiency in specific skills or knowledge areas. Students advance — or revisit material — based on demonstrated understanding rather than time spent. This approach is common in STEM, nursing, and other fields where prerequisite competencies matter, but it can be adapted broadly.
Opportunities
- Ensures students genuinely achieve stated learning objectives before moving on
- Provides clear, transparent expectations that reduce grading disputes
- Accommodates different learning paces without penalizing slower learners
Trade-offs
- Designing and validating rigorous competency criteria takes significant upfront time
- Managing multiple students at different stages can be logistically complex
- May be harder to apply in courses focused on open-ended or creative work
In contract grading, students and instructors co-create an agreement outlining what work is required to earn a particular grade. Labor-based grading is a related variant that evaluates the effort and process students invest rather than judging final products against a quality standard. Both give students more agency and transparency and work especially well in writing-intensive courses where process matters as much as the finished product.
Opportunities
- Increases student autonomy, investment, and sense of ownership over their learning
- Makes grading expectations highly transparent from the outset
- Reduces anxiety and the power imbalance embedded in traditional evaluation
Trade-offs
- Labor-based approaches may not fully account for differences in work quality
- Negotiating and tracking individual contracts can be time-consuming at scale
- Requires strong student self-motivation; less structure can disadvantage some learners
Specifications grading (or “specs grading”) evaluates assignments against clearly articulated criteria and work is typically graded holistically, marked “satisfactory” or “not yet satisfactory” based on whether it meets the specs. The approach reduces grade disputes by making expectations explicit from the start and aligns assessment directly with learning objectives. Specifications grading is suited for multi-part projects, portfolios, and assignments for which process is emphasized.
Opportunities
- Highly transparent criteria reduce ambiguity and grade-related stress for students
- Directly links every assignment to learning objectives
- Encourages an achievement mindset — revision and resubmission are built in
Trade-offs
- Writing clear, comprehensive specs for every assignment is time-intensive upfront
- Managing resubmissions across a large class requires organized systems
- May not capture the full range of student achievement or effort
A shared foundation
Across the many forms alternative grading can take, researchers and practitioners have identified four qualities — often called the “four pillars” — that effective approaches tend to share. Robert Talbert and David Clark, authors of the widely read Grading for Growth, describe them this way:
Clear standards: Students know in advance what acceptable work looks like in the context of the course. Students and instructor have a shared understanding of what learning needs to be evidenced.
Helpful feedback: Feedback is helpful and actionable — students can actually use it to improve and improvement is encouraged.
If there are marks used, the marks are progress indicators: Any marks used indicate growth, not just rank or point totals. Marks may be used as indicators of progress but do not replace feedback.
Reattempts without penalty: Students can revise and resubmit until they meet or exceed the standard.
These pillars are a useful lens for evaluating any approach — including your current one. You may already be doing some of this without calling it “alternative grading.”
Where to Begin
Feeling curious but unsure where to begin? You do not need to do everything at once! Small, simple changes can make big differences. A few things worth considering:
Your teaching style. Are you drawn to offering more feedback? Interested in student self-direction? Your instincts are a good guide toward a method that will feel sustainable.
Your course context. Class size, disciplinary norms, and whether the course is a prerequisite all affect what’s feasible. Starting with one assignment or one unit is a perfectly reasonable entry point.
Your students. First-year students may need more structure and scaffolding when encountering an unfamiliar grading approach. Upper-division or graduate students may take to it more readily.
Constraints. Are there department or accreditation requirements that govern how you assess student work? Knowing the boundaries helps you find the room to experiment within them.
For more information on how to choose and implement alternative grading practices, check out the resources in the “Further Reading” section below. A key resource includes Clark & Talbert’s (2023) extensive “workbook” and instructions for choosing a grading method and guidance for practical implementation.
Further Reading
Online Resources
7 Things to Know About Alternative Grading – Jennifer Todd, TILT at CSU
“Why I Don’t Grade” — Jesse Stommel (blog post and starting point for his book Undoing the Grade)
Options for team grading — CMU at-a-glance comparison of group grading methods
Talbert & Clark’s Grading for Growth blog on Substack
Grading methods for group work — Eberly Center at Carnegie Mellon University
Schinske, J., & Tanner, K. (2014). Teaching more by grading less (or differently). CBE—Life Sciences Education, 13(2), 159–166. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.cbe-14-03-0054
Books
Blum, S.D. (2020). Ungrading: Why rating students undermines learning (and what to do instead). Morgantown: West Virginia University Press. https://muse.jhu.edu/book/78367.
Clark, D., & Talbert, R. (2023). Grading for growth: A guide to alternative grading practices that promote authentic learning and student engagement in higher education. New York: Routledge.
Eyler, J. R. (2024) Failing our future: How grades harm students, and what we can do about it. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins.
Nilson, L. B. (2014). Specifications grading: Restoring rigor, motivating students, and saving faculty time. New York: Routledge.
Authors
This post was written by Stephanie Foster and Kristi Somerville, in consultation with Claude.ai Sonnet 4.6. Thanks to Jennifer Todd for editorial support.