Ungrading is the academic webspace of Mike Garcia, PhD candidate in the Composition Studies program at the University of New Hampshire. The site consists of a blog as well as the webtext of the dissertation. Feel free to leave your comments on either.

Blog: http://www.ungrading.net/ (you’re already here!)
Dissertation webtext: http://phd.ungrading.net/

Note: The first time you leave a comment, it’ll need to be approved by me. This is to prevent spammers from posting freely. After the first time, all of your comments should show up immediately.

My dissertation will focus on the concept of student self-assessment in writing, and how it ties into the “natural” or intrinsically motivated self-assessment that writers of all types do outside the classroom. In particular, I’m interested in the institutional framework that surrounds writing and other classrooms, and how this framework can often constrain a teacher’s efforts to ensure that students are developing a sense of self-awareness in their work. In the traditional definition of instruction, students are not allowed to bear the burden of assessing their own work. That’s a problem, because the definition of learning, in many teachers’ minds, relies heavily on students’ abilities to evaluate their own decisions as well as the qualities of their writing.

My dissertation will focus not only on the development and reification of institutional constraints, but also how those constraints may start to erode as the new realities of 21st-century writing gradually influence the definition of academic writing. I hope to foretell ways in which the digital age and its built-in “feedback loops” could trigger a new era of self-reflexivity in higher education—particularly in the teaching of writing.

So, when you look at the dissertation webtext, you’ll see plenty of historical overview, theorizing, institutional research and classroom research, all related to student self-assessment in writing. However, when you look at the blog, you’ll see a loose collection of writings focused on broader issues as follows.

My broad scholarly interests (for the blog):

• The assessment of writing: social science v. humanities definitions
• Grading, grade “inflation” and grade “balance”: historical trends and signposts
• Self and group evaluation
• Attempts to eradicate/minimize grades in education: methods
• Student attitudes toward grading
• The origins of the modern composition course
• The concepts of error and “remediation”
• The isolationism of “academic writing” as an entity
• Rubrics and other instruments/tools/magic bullets of assessment
• The evolving definition of “composition” and major concerns of the discipline
• Utilitarianism in composition
• Drafting, response (teacher, peer and every other kind) and revision
• Portfolios
• Academia’s historical characterizations of “the student,” especially in relation to teacher control
• The status of composition instruction and English Studies
• Theories of student cognition, development and learning
• Intrinsic motivations in writing
• Neoliberalism and economic metaphors in higher education
• The post-No Child Left Behind standards movement
• Authentic and performance assessment
• Progressive/Deweyite movements
• The inquiry movement
• Writing and composing new media, especially in digital environments
• The problem of assessing fluid, multi-authored texts
• Interdisciplinary issues in assessment

and more.

If you want to see a lot of assessment-related ideas flying around, you’ve come to the right place. If you want to follow my thought process as I write the dissertation, this is also where you should be. But if you’d prefer your reading in a more filtered, organized and polished format, head over to the webtext.