David Clark

Grading for Growth: A Guide to Alternative Grading Practices that Promote Authentic Learning and Student Engagement in Higher Education Are you satisfied with your current and traditional grading system? Does it accurately reflect your students’ learning and progress? Can it be gamed? Does it lead to grade-grubbing and friction ...

News! Grading for Growth is now available as an audiobook!

If you prefer listening to case studies, advice, and history of grading, check it out!

If you ever want to read a paper for free and can't find it otherwise, email the lead author and politely ask for a copy. You will not be bothering the person. You will in fact make their whole entire day. I have had scientists get so excited I asked they sent me everything they ever published.

Building Community as a Catalyst Advancing Alternative Grading in Speech-Language Pathology from the Ground Up

Today on Grading for Growth, Kerry Mandulak shares her path into alternative grading while considering the admissions process for a professional program.

gradingforgrowth.com/p/building-c...

Pairs well with alternative grading Supporting productive struggle by sending a consistent message

Today on Grading for Growth, I write about the importance of sending a consistent message throughout your course design.

Here are some ways to support the message of alternative grading.

Removing the Training Wheels How I shifted toward student self-assessment and collaborative grading in a pre-professional program

Today on Grading for Growth, a guest post by Ainsley Vergara about her path to using alternative grading in Speech Pathology. gradingforgrowth.com/p/removing-t...

Teaching through trauma How Grading for Growth Helped Save my Sanity

Today on Grading for Growth, a guest post from Acacia Ackles about her own experience of teaching through trauma.

gradingforgrowth.com/p/teaching-t...

Communicating Effectively with Students about Alternative Grading Helping students track their grade and understand its meaning

Today on Grading for Growth: Halley McCormick describes how she introduces students to the ideas of alternative grading and reinforces those ideas throughout the semester.

Anyhow, you have stumbled on one of my Hobbies and I am always up for talking about it.

I've tried this and liked it! But squash is such a space hog compared to corn and beans that I gave up on it.

Try peas early and several varieties of beans later. I bet if you stagger them you'll have coverage all summer.

Are you putting together a new garden? Add some peas too!

I've never *intentionally* dried them, but it happens by accident all the time right in the garden. I usually freeze mine instead.

I grow plain old Blue Lake pole beans. Grow great in my area, taste good. Undoubtedly something else is better adapted to your climate though.

I grow green beans, both bush and pole. The pole beans climb up my cornstalks and I love that. What would you like to know?

Thoughts for the new year Bite-sized ideas on alternative grading in 2026

It's a new year, and I'm in school planning today. Here are six bite-sized alternative grading ideas for the new year: gradingforgrowth.com/p/thoughts-f...

Also, for cases where you want to require that students do "basically everything" or "all of something", write those requirements in those terms rather than hard-coding a number.

For example, "all homeworks Successful" rather than "10 homeworks Successful"

* Organize standards by priority (core, regular, supplementary)
* Create grade bundles with a clear hierarchy
* Lean in to collaborative grading for final grade-setting

Some initial thoughts:

You'll have to make changes after an unexpected event. No system can just absorb a big shock unchanged.

So we can think about design choices that make those changes easier to identify and prioritize, like:

two monkeys are playing with a tire cover on the ground in front of a car . ALT: two monkeys are playing with a tire cover on the ground in front of a car .

Here I was thinking "Should I use Sarah's name for them? Is mine too close to 'basic groups'?"

Anyhow, feel free if you like it! I'm sure I stole those hubcaps from somewhere else!

I was thinking about writing something up about how I use "base groups" in classes. Turns out Sarah does almost exactly the same thing and has some excellent reflection on it.

The actual point of the paper is that teaching is a system, and that IBL, alt-grading, team-based activities, individual goal setting, etc. mutually reinforce and give students a consistent message.

Try again!

Feel free to DM me an email address and I can send you a preprint.

I'm proud of lots of things about this paper, and it is seriously worth a read. But among the things I'm proud of are:
- 100% on-point use of "Trust me, bro"
- Citation regarding Too Many David Clarks
- The title

It's me! I wrote about how I use IBL, collaborative grading, and much more all together in my favorite course: Euclidean Geometry.

Small changes to handle AI What I did this semester to address AI use in one of my classes

I finally did it: I wrote about AI! Mostly, small changes I made that had a good effect, and the results of a student survey. gradingforgrowth.com/p/small-chan...

Alternative Grading in Large Classes How to implement pedagogical values within logistical constraints

Excited to share a guest post on my blog this week by Jayme Dyer, Katie Mattaini, and Eden Tanner about alt grading in large classes. This is something I get asked about all the time, so I'm glad to have an opportunity to share their work on the topic! emilypittsdonahoe.substack.com/p/alternativ...

One of our main advising resources *always* logs me out when I go to it. After a long go-round with IT, they acknowledged "It seems to be timing out" and are now acting like that is the intended behavior.

Had that experience in a college Econ class in the early 2000s. It was... noticeable... even at that point (clearly, I still remember it!).

A pointer hovering over a link to reveal the address: http://www.russianmafia.ru/stealyourmoney/forgodssakedontclick/

This is at least one of the more amusing cybersecurity trainings I've ever done.

When Alternative Grading Meets Coordination Lessons in scaling alternative grading to a multi-section, coordinated Calculus I course

Today on Grading for Growth: Alternative grading in a large multi-section coordinated Calculus course. A guest post by Lucas Quintero and Rebecca Swanson.