This episode features an interview with Jesse Stommel, Executive Director of the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies at University of Mary Washington. He is Co-founder of Digital Pedagogy Lab and Hybrid Pedagogy: a digital journal of learning, teaching, and technology. In addition to his focus on digital and critical pedagogy, Jesse has been a gradeless educator for his entire career, as he recounts in his blog post "Why I Don't Grade."
Why grades are "the biggest and most insidious obstacle to education”
How de-emphasizing grades coincides with a pedagogy of equity and social justice
Why a gradeless space will not automatically be an equitable one
How seemingly neutral platforms can flatten differences and influence pedagogies
How we need to think about going gradeless in order it to be liberatory, transformative, an act of resistance