(Un)Grading
This course does not grade your work in the usual way. Nobody will put an overall score on your assignments (though there will often be right and wrong answers to individual questions), and there is no weighted formula at the end of the semester. Instead, you decide your own final grade and make the case for it.
Why (Un)Grading?
This is an honors course. Students who choose it tend to want a challenge, and most of you are here because the material interests you. If you make a good-faith effort all semester, you have done what this course asks of you. Managing that effort through points, penalties, and percentages would add paperwork and anxiety (yours and mine) without adding much learning.
The course is built around a research project of your own design. Even the assigned homework leaves a lot of room for personal exploration: two students can complete the same assignment in very different ways and learn a great deal from each. A single scale for measuring all of that fits poorly.
Flexibility. You have other classes, jobs, families, and lives. Under this system you can decide to put in a B effort here and devote more time to something else, and that is a legitimate choice. You owe nobody an explanation for it except yourself, and, at the end of the semester, your final report.
AI. When an AI model can produce a working schema or stylesheet in thirty seconds, a grade on the finished file says very little about what you understand. What matters in this course is your judgment: what you asked for, how you checked it, and what you learned along the way. Points measure that badly. Your own account of your work shows it much better. (See AI Policies for an AI Course for more.)
There is also a pedagogical case. “Ungrading” is an established movement in higher education. Its proponents argue that grades are a poor form of feedback, that they steer students toward safe choices over interesting ones, and that students learn more when asked to reflect on their own learning (Blum, Ungrading; Stommel, “How to Ungrade”). Research on how well it works is still limited, though studies of students’ experience in ungraded courses have mostly been encouraging (Hasinoff et al. 2024; Emerson 2026).
The Short Version
- Your final grade is the grade you claim, justified in a final report at the end of the semester.
- This is the honor system. It assumes that you will self-evaluate with integrity.
- Your evidence: your completion record, your Worm Journal, feedback on your capstone coding assignments, and the course’s learning outcomes.
- Feedback, not grades: throughout the semester, the TAs and I respond to your work in writing with qualitative assessment.
- I override a claimed grade at the end of the semester only in rare cases, and never without written warning well in advance.
- No need to email me about absences or missed work. Account for them in your journal and your final report instead.
How Your Grade Is Determined
At the end of the semester you will submit a final report in which you claim a grade and explain why it is the right one. (The report has its own page: Final Report.) Except in the rare cases described below, the grade you claim is the grade you receive.
The point of the exercise is not to guess the “right answer” or anticipate what grade I have in mind for you. The decision, and the responsibility for it, rest on your shoulders: you are the one who knows how much you put into this course and what you got out of it.
What Goes Into Your Decision
Your Completion Record
The TAs and I keep track of which assignments you complete, both homework and in-class work. At the end of the semester you will receive a report summarizing it: for example, what percentage of the homework assignments you completed. This is information for you to interpret and weigh in your final report, not a formula for your grade.
The Worm Journal
You will keep a journal throughout the semester, written in ink pen in a paper notebook of your own.
Why “Worm”? In computing, WORM storage means “write once, read many”: data can be written a single time and read as often as you like, but never altered or erased. A page written in ink works the same way, and needs no electricity. (Keeping one also makes you a bookworm.) In a course about digital technology, the journal is deliberately the oldest technology in the room.
What it is for. The journal is where you reflect on, describe, and articulate what you are learning. It is our window into what you are actually getting out of this course, which we cannot observe directly.
What it is not. It is not a log. We already track attendance and completed assignments, so there is no need to record them here. Write about ideas, problems, discoveries, frustrations, and connections, especially as they bear on your research project.
Form and content. We want the journal to be flexible and open-ended, so its form and content are largely up to you. The one firm minimum: at least one short entry for every class session.
Keep it with you. Bring the journal to every class. Some in-class activities use it, and we may ask to look at it during class. From time to time we will also ask you to scan and submit what you have written so far. The notebook itself always stays with you.
It is not private. Although we call it a journal, it is not a diary. The instructor and the TAs will read it, so do not put anything in it that you would not want us to see.
Capstone Feedback
The capstone coding assignments at the end of each unit come back with feedback on each part, but no grade. They are meant to show you where things stand, and you can draw on them when you make your case.
Learning Outcomes
The course’s learning outcomes describe what you should be able to do by the end of the semester. They are the shared reference point for your final report and for the feedback you receive along the way.
Feedback Along the Way
When you submit journal scans or responses to prompted reflection assignments, I will respond in writing with my own qualitative assessment of how you are doing. This feedback does not determine your grade. It exists to help you assess yourself. It might say, for instance, that you need to do more to catch up, or that you are being too selective in what you devote attention to. If the evidence plainly supports a higher grade than the one you seem to be aiming for, I will tell you that too.
These check-ins happen at several points during the semester and serve the purpose of a midterm report: they come early enough for you to change course.
The TAs also give you written feedback on your work. They never grade it.
When I Override a Grade
As instructor of record, I am responsible for final grades, and I reserve the right to change a claimed grade. I expect to use it very rarely; almost every student will never need to think about it. It applies in two situations.
A claim not made in good faith. For instance: claiming a high grade after attending fewer than half the class sessions, without doing the assignments adequately, or without completing one of the course’s foundations, such as the Worm Journal or the research project.
Circumstances beyond what a grade can fairly reflect. A serious illness or family emergency that disrupts a large part of the semester may call for a remedy available under university policy, such as an incomplete (G grade) or a withdrawal. In those cases we will work out the right path together, with your academic advisor or the Dean of Students office.
An override for lack of good faith will never come as a surprise. Before it happens, there will be a documented record of concern: written feedback over the course of the semester telling you that your effort is falling short and what you need to do about it. If you have received no such warning, your claimed grade stands.
Absences and Missed Work
Please do not email me about absences, missed assignments, or extensions: this system already accounts for them, and there are no penalties to negotiate. If you miss class, catch up on what you missed and keep writing in your journal. How you managed the semester is something to reflect on there and to account for in your final report.
Emails about course content, ideas, and your research project are always welcome.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I just give myself an A?
If an A is the grade you can honestly defend, yes.
How do I know what grade to claim?
Read the learning outcomes, look at your completion record and your journal, and pay attention to the written feedback you receive along the way. Then make the call.
Will I be compared to the rest of the class?
No. Your completion record describes your own work, not where you stand relative to anyone else.
Is the Worm Journal graded?
No. Nothing in this course receives a grade, not even the capstone assignments; your work gets feedback instead. The journal is your main evidence, and our main window into your learning.
Can I keep my journal on a computer?
No. Ink on paper. That is the point.
Are the TAs grading my work?
No. They give feedback, never grades.