Universal design in ungrading

Describe a challenge you have wrestled with in your teaching.

In 2023, my first student in 20 years of teaching disclosed his autism to me. Like many, he had accommodations on file in K-12 but decided against it at UW Tacoma. Within days, another student shared that he had ADHD, saying that the university kept students like him around to provide the lower end of the bell curve. He too decided against accommodations.

I set out to learn more about autism and ADHD. I learned that 1 in 5 US college students report having a disability (NCES, 2024), and around 90% of these are hidden or invisible to others (Kent State, 2022). In my research into autism, I began to recognize myself and was eventually diagnosed as having both autism and ADHD, two types of neurodiversity.

I learned language for my lived experience: executive function challenges are part of daily life for many neurodivergent people. Mundane decisions can be overwhelming. Executive functioning helps people accomplish tasks in the order of importance. But for many neurodivergent people, everything is equally important. Some can become so engrossed in an activity that we lose track of time and forget self-care. Some jump from task to task and struggle to complete any. These challenges create invisible labor: what may feel like a major accomplishment to one may not appear that way to another.

Additionally, when they receive negative or even neutral feedback, neurodivergent people can experience rejection sensitivity dysphoria (RSD), a strong emotional response spiral resulting in anxiety, perfectionism, masking, and people pleasing. A bad grade or negative comment can mean quitting entirely, but genuine praise can make our spirits soar.

How could formative feedback be compassionate to the needs of neurodiverse students? Could universal design in learning also support my executive function challenges? Could I balance rigor and equity?

What did you do to solve or overcome that challenge?

For decades I had been fussing with rubrics (holistic, analytic, single-point), grading contracts, gamification, and then specifications grading. None of these approaches ever felt quite right. While attending the SEED Institute in Autumn that fall (2023), I read about “ungrading” as a teaching practice (Blum and Kohn 2020) and realized it could support the neurodivergent community.

One of the characteristics that makes an ungraded course different is its emphasis on self-reflection and formative feedback. After a course review and a self-evaluation on their writing portfolios, students propose their grade based on their learning, growth, and the criteria articulated in a rubric shared at the beginning of the term.

To create buy-in, I contextualize ungrading with an assigned reading (Kohn 1999) that argues that grades have harmful effects on learning, motivation, honesty, and relationships. Based on their lived experiences, students seldom disagree, but few, if any, have ever experienced ungrading.

As a first day activity, I ask students to brainstorm ingredients for learning. Patterns emerge: class after class identify mentors, research, and mistakes as essential ingredients, but none so far have mentioned grades.

During peer review, ungrading decentralizes power, allowing students agency in their revisions. Peer reviewers provide more descriptive feedback. When peer-reviewing a graded assignment, reviewers tend to offer more prescriptive feedback. With ungrading, students seem more authentic and peer-focused in their feedback. Many of my students cite doing peer review as their most impactful learning experience of the course.

While some students are anxious at first, many express less grade anxiety overall; they stop checking their grade. Recently, a first-year student commented that he’d rather write an essay for my class than for his graded class. He was interested in what he wanted to write rather than perform for a grade. Others admit to taking risks they wouldn’t normally take.

What did you learn from that experience?

Ungrading allows me to focus my energy more efficiently into formative feedback and praise, not deliberating between shades of grades. For students, it allows them to take creative risks in their writing. For neurodivergent students, ungrading boosts executive function by reducing the fear of making mistakes and the likelihood of rejection sensitivity dysphoria (RSD) that is often triggered when students receive a less than perfect mark, at which point they’re more likely to stop trying.

Given that a fifth of our students report disabilities, it makes sense that we continue to research and engage in professional development in neuroinclusive teaching. Being transparent about supporting neurodiversity also means normalizing the ways neurodivergent people show up in university spaces. More students now disclose their neurodivergence to me. I credit ungrading with creating spaces for improved relationships that inspire growth mindsets.

Ungrading increases students’ time on task and opens a growth mindset window that spans the entire term. Ungrading benefits everyone. I ungrade so that all students feel seen, know they belong, and learn that they too can soar.