Low-Stakes Assignments for Grading

Did you ever have a dream where you were back in school, you enter a class, and you realize you have a final exam on a topic that you have no idea what it is?  The pressure of exams is so great that it unconsciously affects us decades later.  In fact, high-stakes assignments and testing have been linking to increasing suicidal ideations (Wang, 2016), and higher suicide rates (Kapur, 2021; Singer, 2017). They have been connected to undermining educational goals, perpetrating inequalities, crating unequitable learning environments, and encouraging cheating both from students and educational actors, such as teachers, administrators, and even state officials (Nicols & Berliner, 2007). So then, why do we use high-stakes testing and assignments?  Tradition?

 

Low-stakes assignments when taken individually do not significantly impact a students’ grades. Their purpose is primarily to provide students with a performance indicator.  Students can then reflect on the areas in need of improvement and how to improve. The low-stakes assignment also provides assistive scaffolding by providing regular formative feedback that is frequent and timely (Kuh, Kinzie, Schuh, & Whitt, 2010). They work best when providing formative feedback, starting and continuing throughout the course.

 

Benefits of Low-Stakes Assignments

A few of the benefits of low-stakes assignments include:

• They provide feedback for instructors about how successful students are learning. This can be particularly effective in environments where it is hard to pick up on subtle clues of students struggling, such as in online or hybrid classes.
• Allowing instructors to direct students to resources if they need further assistance or support
• Early feedback opens up communication between students and their instructors, possibly increasing their likeliness to seek help when needed
• Allowing students to be active participants in the evaluation of their own learning
• Encouraging students and increasing the likelihood of their engagement and attendance

Many of these will rise your retention rates and help students succeed.

 

Examples of Low-Stakes Assignments

But what would a low-stakes assignment look like? Some examples of low-stakes assignments include:

•  Self-tests. (ungraded or low-points). These can even be automated with online testing so that it does not take any time in the classroom.  These can also be anonymized to give students comfort. Self-tests are particularly effective when combined with having…
• Multiple attempts (on questions or whole exam). This feature reduces test-anxiety and allows students to learn from their errors.  When feedback is given for each question, you will notice the best results. The knowledge of that they can take the exam another time also reduces the pressure to cheat (Wehlburg, 2021).
• Discussion/Collaboration: Students sharing their writing or thoughts with others and get feedback will assist their learning and meeting learning outcomes
• Multiple submissions of a paper. Feedback from a first submission with time to reflect and rewrite their paper allows students to hone their writing skills.  
• Reflective journaling. Writing self-reflective content both increases one’s meta-cognitive skills used for learning as well as better develops writing skills.  An added perk is that AI tools have a hard time replicating this type of writing as well.
•  A Threaded Assignment i.e., breaking down the assignment into several parts.  Individually, the grades or low, but collaboratively the project aggregates to a large assignment, such as a term paper. This technique often proves the scaffolds that help disenfranchised, or otherwise struggling, students succeed. A sample of deconstructing a large assignment into components would be making a thesis paper into the following smaller assignments:

• Thesis/Abstract
• Outline
• Annotated bibliography
•  1st draft
• Final draft

These are just a few examples; however, they offer an excellent opportunity for both you and your students to get needed feedback to help improve your course’s student success rate. These also help develop a grading system that can clearly show the steps necessary for mastering the meeting the learning outcomes of the course. 

References

Bayraktar, B (2021) Tip: Many Low Stakes Assignments. Tips for Teaching Professors, Apr 6.

Drabick D. A. G., Weisberg R., Paul L., Bubier J. L. (2007). Keeping it short and sweet: Brief, ungraded writing assignments facilitate learning. Teaching of Psychology, 34, 172–176.

Greenhalgh, S. (2016) The Hidden Cost of Asia’s High Test Scores. The Diplomat. Dec 9

Hale, M. (2018) Thwarting Plagiarism in the Humanities Classroom: Storyboards, Scaffolding, and a Death Fair. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, v18 n4 p86-110 Dec.

Kapur, M (2021) Student suicides put a spotlight on high-pressure exams during India’s pandemic. Quartz. Sept 17.

Kuh, G. D., Kinzie, J., Schuh, J.S., and Whitt, E.J. (2010). Student success in college: Creating conditions that matter. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Nicols, S. and D. Berliner (2007) Collateral Damage: how High-States Testing Corrupts America’s Schools. Harvard Education Press, Cambridge, MA.

Mintz, S (2023) 10 Ways to Prevent Cheating. Inside Higher Ed. February 16.

Singer, S (2017) Middle School Suicides Double as Common Core Testing Intensifies. Huffington Post. Aug 2.

Wang, Liang. (2016). The effect of high-stakes testing on suicidal ideation of teenagers with reference-dependent preferences. Journal of Population Economics. 29.

Warnock, Scott. (2013). Frequent, low-stakes grading: Assessment for communication, confidence. Faculty Focus. Madison, WI: Magna Publications. 

Wehlburg, K (2021) Assessment design that supports authentic learning (and discourages cheating) Times Higher Education. Nov 24.