Free to Learn: Ungrading in Sociology Courses

Since its widespread adoption in the education system, letter grading has received sustained criticism from scholars related to its reliability and validity as a measure of student learning and its impact on students’ intrinsic motivation, psychological well-being, and learning outcomes. Despite this, few alternate assessment techniques have been studied empirically, especially in sociology classes. In this article, we contribute to a growing literature on ungrading, or alternate assessment, an approach to student assessment that decenters the use of letter grading in the classroom. We employ alternate assessment practices and gather data on three sociology courses over two semesters at a large Midwestern flagship university, exploring the impact of ungrading on student experiences, learning outcomes, and psychological well-being. We find that the implementation of ungrading resulted in a measured decrease in student stress and anxiety and an increase in self-reported learning compared to traditionally letter-graded classes.