As you submit assignments, the limbic system of your brain may skitter to life and wonder when you’ll “know how [you] did.” That part of you, conditioned by years of formal schooling, will want a number. It might recognize grade abatement as an attempt to eliminate the toxic stamp of grades on each assignment, but it won’t immediately understand how we can upend the traditional feedback model entirely.
This is a lightly edited repost of instructional material from May of 2017. It has a little more universality and a little less class-specific feedback.
The focuses of this instructional post are in-class focus and feedback. The impetus is that it is never too early to warn you against straying from the path. We shouldn’t wait until the spring to discuss poor decisions; we should talk about it now, at the end of the first week, before any bad habits metastasize. The worst habits, like wasting class time and ignoring instruction, will slowly poison you.