Duke Instructors are Changing the Narrative around Grading at Duke

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“I just realized how many negative emotions students have attached to grades.”
-Charlotte Asmuth, Participant in the 2025 Innovative Grading and Assessment Community of Practice

Since the 1990s, there has been a movement away from traditional assessment approaches and towards innovative grading and assessment (IGA) strategies, often referred to as “alternative grading”. Research shows that traditional grading fails to measure how well students are learning and often exacerbates academic inequalities (Smeding et al., 2013; Malouff & Thorsteinsson, 2016; Erbes, Wizner, & Powlis, 2021; Tai, Ajjawi, & Umarova, 2024). In contrast, IGA strategies reframe how grades are used and allow students and educators to focus on the learning process, mastery, and growth – not just the outcome. The result is that IGA strategies can encourage intrinsic motivation, promote deeper learning, reduce test anxiety, and prevent academic dishonesty (Talbert, 2024). Additionally, IGA strategies can accommodate diverse learning approaches, backgrounds, and needs, and, when implemented thoughtfully and carefully, potentially increase equity in courses (Clark, 2022a; Clark, 2022b).

Through one-on-one consultations with instructors, members of the Teaching Innovation Team have seen the use of IGA practices growing at Duke. We have also heard that many instructors feel they are alone in trying innovative grading, or they don’t know of others using similar approaches in their classes. In response, our team established an IGA Community of Practice (CoP). CoPs are a form of programming where instructors come together to discuss a common topic, learn from each other, and apply their knowledge in their teaching (Abigail, 2016; Hakkola et al., 2021). We felt this format would provide the best launching point for creating a broader community around IGA at Duke.

We designed the CoP with two goals in mind:

  1. Help instructors work with and learn from colleagues also using innovative grading and assessment approaches in their classes.
  2. Empower instructors to share their knowledge with the broader Duke community, becoming champions for innovative grading and assessment at Duke.

In February 2025, after a rigorous application process, we brought 11 Duke instructors together to begin our IGA CoP. We designed the program so that the cohort would lead the direction of the content and topics being covered, while our planning team provided a structure for meetings and work. After an initial kickoff meeting in which the cohort began building community and a shared understanding of what IGA means to them, we held regular meetings throughout Spring and Summer 2025. During the meetings, and through asynchronous interactions on Canvas, the cohort discussed topics such as the mechanics of IGA, participation and attendance, rethinking rigor, student buy-in, and the design and communication of course materials. Each meeting ended with concrete ideas about how to implement practices in their classes, ensuring discussions translated into actions.

In Fall 2025, the instructors split into two smaller teams to define and pursue projects that position them as advocates for IGA at Duke. One team focused on providing support to instructors when implementing IGA practices, and the other team focused on the academic discourse around IGA. Our team of Teaching Consultants continued to act as mentors and resources for the teams.

Motivations for Using Innovative Grading and Assessment

There are many reasons instructors might be interested in moving away from traditional approaches to grading. Even within our Community of Practice, there were different motivations. One participant, Adam Rosenblatt, said, “I found traditional grading to be one of the things that most detracted from my love of teaching… I did always have this sense, I guess, of bad faith that [justifying letter grades] was distorting for me the way that I read student work. And then, of course, distorting or at least narrowing my relationships with students.”

Another participant, Megan Madonna, shared a slightly different reason: “I wanted student buy-in to how the course was taught… The projects can end in a bunch of different places. So I wanted a grading scheme that could account for that and respected the process of the engineering process as opposed to kind of a black or white, yes or no ending.”

Highlights from the Community of Practice

Our program has already achieved its first goal of helping instructors work with and learn from colleagues around the topic of IGA. The instructors share resources, bounce ideas off each other, and have built a robust community. It’s clear that the instructors are feeling the success of this goal. For example, Madonna shared, “[Without this CoP,] I don’t think I would have been connected to any one else doing [IGA], so I just appreciated the very intentional making of community.”

Another participant, Rhiannon Scharnhorst, shared, “[It’s] made me feel more confident in what I’m doing… to know that there’s a shared community of people doing very similar kinds of practices, and to find that space across different departments at the university makes it feel like it’s a much broader, more collective endeavor of people who care about how the student learning is impacted by grades.”


Similarly, Rosenblatt shared, “It’s been really great to see other people’s syllabi, other people’s approaches. And I do think that because of the scale of Duke and the extent to which we all get… swallowed up in our own worlds, I always learn so much [when] I am able to have sustained conversations with people outside my field.”

Upcoming Instructor-Led Programming

The work being done by the cohort in small teams this semester is also helping them to achieve the second goal of the program of sharing their knowledge and becoming champions for IGA at Duke. In November, the cohort will host two events for the broader Duke community. On November 7th, join four cohort members for a virtual panel discussion titled “Innovative Grading and Assessment: Stories from the Classroom.” The following week, on November 14th, join five other cohort members for an in-person session of lightning talks and workshop time titled “Squash Grades: Transforming Assessment Practices for Deeper Learning.”

One of the teams is also working to bring students into the conversation around grading at Duke. They plan to produce written artifacts from this work to be published later this semester.

A Call to Action for Duke

We know there are other instructors at Duke using various types of innovative grading and assessment practices in their classes. Whether this concept is new to you or you have been using these practices for a while, we hope this post and the work of this cohort inspires you to join the growing community around IGA at Duke by connecting with colleagues and attending our upcoming events. As Scharnhorst put it, “we’re having a moment of reckoning about what it means to be educated in a higher education context,” and now is the perfect time to “jump on our bandwagon.”

While trying something new can feel intimidating, our cohort members have some words of encouragement and support:

“It doesn’t…require a whole course overhaul. It can be small micro-practices, and it doesn’t involve a ton of work… It can be a couple of assignments or a couple of different things that you do. It can be much easier than overhauling the whole course or [your] whole way of teaching.” – Megan Madonna

“I think as professors, we do not need to repeat that which has been done to us before as students… I think there are other possibilities for assessing learning and ones that motivate students to complete work and actually improve and stay on a timeline without striving for perfection.” – Charlotte Asmuth

Finding Support

If you are interested in learning more about innovative grading and assessment or want support in trying these techniques in your courses, our team of Teaching Consultants is here to help. Join our virtual open Office Hours or reach out to us directly at lile@duke.edu. We are excited to work with you to bring more innovative teaching and learning practices to Duke.

Additional Resources
References

Smeding, A., Darnon, C., Souchal, C., Toczek-Capelle, M. C., & Butera, F. (2013). Reducing the socio-economic status achievement gap at university by promoting mastery-oriented assessment. PloS one, 8(8), e71678.

Malouff, J. M., & Thorsteinsson, E. B. (2016). Bias in grading: A meta-analysis of experimental research findings. Australian Journal of Education, 60(3), 245-256.

Erbes, S., Wizner, M., & Powlis, J. (2021). Understanding the role of traditional & proficiency-based grading systems upon student learning and college admissions. Journal of Higher Education Theory and Practice, 21(10), 54-68. 

Talbert, R. (2024, June 10). Is alternative grading innovative?. Grading for Growth. 

Clark, D. (2022a, July 18). Grading for Equity with Grading for Growth Part 1. Grading for Growth

Clark, D. (2022b, July 25). Grading for Equity with Grading for Growth Part 2. Grading for Growth

Tai, J., Ajjawi, R., & Umarova, A. (2024). How do students experience inclusive assessment? A critical review of contemporary literature. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 28(9), 1936-1953. 

Abigail, L. K. M. (2016). Do communities of practice enhance faculty development?. Health Professions Education, 2(2), 61-74.

Hakkola, L., Ruben, M. A., McDonnell, C., Herakova, L. L., Buchanan, R., & Robbie, K. (2021). An equity-minded approach to faculty development in a community of practice. Innovative Higher Education, 46(4), 393-410.