In It Together...For the Grade?

It's the first day of class. You expect to walk in, introduce yourself by name, job title, and department. You expect to go over the syllabus and identify what you have to do in this class to get an A. You expect the professor to make all of the decisions. This is something you accept and have been accepting since your K-12 years. You don't question it. 

So you walk into class. You sit down, introduce yourself by name, job title, and department. You go over the syllabus and figure out what you need to do to get an A. Nothing new.

And then the professor tells you that you have 40 minutes to decide, as a group, whether you want to be evaluated and graded on the basis of your individual work at the end of the semester or whether you want to be evaluated and graded based on the average of the group's work (read: individual grade vs. group grade).

Say what? The student gets to decide on how they're to be evaluated? The relationship between the professor and the student that most of us have come to expect and accept has totally been upended.
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True story. You can imagine the looks of shock, confusion, and nervousness that passed through the room. And in those 40 minutes, plus some overtime, many different thoughts were explored. Some individuals expressed excitement about the possibilities (positive) that could arise from this experiment. Some expressed reservations about the potential pitfalls, citing negative group work incidents they experienced in the past. We voted and by a majority accepted the challenge.

Personally, I found myself intrigued by the thought of all being in it together instead of just focusing on ourselves and our grades. Looking around the room, I recognized many faces from previous classes and determined that I would love to work with each and every one of them in that capacity. I admired and respected all of the contributions of my classmates and I felt comfortable 'taking the risk' with these individuals.

It's interesting to assess my relationship with grades throughout my education. In high school, I worked to achieve A's. Nothing else would suffice (I had to get into a good college after all). In college, my grades fell for the first time initially and then stabilized as I found a better handle on college work. But it wasn't the same. I worked but I didn't obsess about A's. Interestingly enough, this time around in graduate school, I found myself wanting my A's. I wanted to prove to myself that I was that good (whatever that means). But this class flipped the script and I am definitely reassessing my relationship with teaching, learning, and grades.

Maybe I'm more optimistic about working with other people and collaborating than others but I'm actually excited for this opportunity to experiment how our class dynamic is affected by this. It is a scary notion but I think for the first time ever, we have the power as a class to affect our learning and the learning of our peers in a way that transcends the traditional classroom. It's no longer just the responsibility of the professor to teach and for us to accept that. We have the chance to take responsibility over our own learning. And really, at this stage in our lives and careers, it's not really about the grades anymore. I am confident that we will have a completely successful experience and I truly believe that we are in it together, no matter what.