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TL;DR — WIP GAP
WIP GAP stands for work-in-progress grade abatement profile. It refers to a provisional score entered into the online gradebook. Click on provisional in that sentence, and you’ll see why we’d use that adjective: This score should be changed later by the student’s further choices.
The use of a WIP GAP score, as opposed to the scheduled GAP score, is often because students have failed to meet the basic requirements of the course. For example, students may have failed to read assigned texts, to complete assigned analysis, or to use class time effectively.
In any course, those choices would result in failing grades — zeros for reading quizzes, zeros for missing work, zeros for class participation or homework.
In here, like in any course, that failure is being communicated to students and stakeholders through Infinite Campus, where a work-in-progress profile score will sound the alarm.
The difference is, again, the provisional nature of the score. It can and should change. The score provides an opportunity for self-assessment, amenability, and growth, and the profile-based assessments we use invite and reward that sort of growth.
But growth is only possible when the student and every other stakeholder moves past the number in the gradebook and into the specifics of the work. The number is a symbol; it’s there to motivate change and invite further investment. It must be unpacked, however, and that takes a different kind of involvement from stakeholders:
Any number, work-in-progress or otherwise, must be applied to the skill, traits, and knowledge of the course. The number is a key, or perhaps the door itself; if it is not used to step into the learning environment, that digit will be just as frustrating and inscrutable as traditional grades.
So, TL;DR: If you are reading this, you probably have work-in-progress grade abatement profiles. Those scores address choices, but both the choices and the number should change. The extent of that change depends on you.
Here is a letter sent home in 2020 about WIP GAP scores that illustrates how they work: https://tinyurl.com/letter-2020-1120.
A More Thorough Explanation
One of the advantages of using profile-based assessment is that we can pull the trigger on that profile whenever we want. We could take all the evidence of an entire quarter into consideration. We could use the evidence created over three weeks. Most years, we are counting out 15 days exactly between assessments.
We can also determine a profile based on the evidence of just two days. Here’s how — and why — we would do that.
In 2019, September 25 was the first day of the second panel of the first quarter. Students had read an essay, seen here, and been given eight analysis questions. Those questions, available here, set up an open-ended essay-writing prompt, which is also online.
The central essay, by Paul Graham, was given on September 16; the analysis questions, on September 23. Students had a week to read. The analysis questions were due by midnight on September 25. By design, this would have given us two days in class to brainstorm and outline the students’ own writing — to apply the analysis, in other words, to each student’s own “river” essay.
Each step in this process is essential to the next. It’s not just about learning how (and why) to write; it’s a study in how we learn, which requires a sense of the larger purpose. In here, that larger purpose is made 100% transparent.
On September 26, many students had not finished the analysis. Some admitted that they had not yet finished reading the assigned essay. I stressed the importance of the analysis as part of a universal process for writing, which can be seen here; then I gave them the rest of class to work. I took notes on how that work went.
By the end of the day on September 26, we had two major data points:
- the extent to which each student completed the analytical assignment; and
- observations of in-class focus and productivity, ostensibly in the service of completing that assignment.
For some students, the extra time led to clarification, engaging discussion, and greater understanding. The larger purpose of analysis became clear. Our discussions connected the reading to the students’ own writing, and they understood more about how in-class focus unlocks everything else. (That last link had also been assigned and discussed earlier in the year.)
For other students, the opportunity passed right by, as it didn’t really have anything to do with their focus on discussing Friday’s Homecoming game, playing the new Mario Kart, etc.
For these less mature students, therefore, there has to be a different motivation, and we have to use traditional symbols and Skinner-box logic. Skinner’s experiments, of course, are a Google search away, and there are plenty of posts on this site that deal with finding the right motivation. Here is one:
There’s nothing arbitrary about holding students accountable for their in-class focus. Self-control and self-regulation are the foundation of all success.
Nevertheless, the idea that bad habits will adhere to us is too abstract for less mature students. Only a tiny fraction is ever openly disrespectful; the rest are just bad at self-regulation and self-control. They also aren’t engaged in a good-faith discussion of learning self-regulation and self-control.
So it’s up to the course to show them their progress in a more immediately motivating way: through a failing grade. Since that grade is derived from clear and concrete evidence, it’s not open to debate. It’s a clinical measurement of success and failure.
The two most important elements of this kind of WIP GAP:
- It is based on deliberate choices the student has made.
- More importantly, it can be raised later through growth, reflection, amenability, and hard work.
It is, therefore, not just a Skinner-box shock. It’s also an authentic opportunity for growth. It’s a way of saying to a student who has disengaged from their responsibilities that, yes, your every choice actually does matter. If you don’t do the work, you will fail in the context of that work. This is how it is for everyone.
Obviously, a traditional grading system would also find these students failing after such bad decisions. They would have zeros for the assignments they didn’t complete; they would lose half or full credit for homework done after the deadline; and they would get zeros for any sort of class-participation grade, in-class check, formative step, etc. In those cases, however, there would be little hope for recovery.
Now, what almost always happens in these cases is that students given a low WIP GAP score process it as they would any other low score. They panic. They are incredulous. This is important, because the idea is not to surprise or devastate anyone; surprise sort of arrests forward motion, and we have to get to actionable changes fast.
Instead, it’s best to think about this kind of work-in-progress grade symbolically: This is the currency students are used to and the current they are used to. This is a familiar shock.
And that is why a work-in-progress profile has to be based on really obvious choices: In this case, the lack of a required analysis assignment, plus the obvious lack of work on that assignment in class. The two student choices go hand-in-hand. A student claiming to be working hard but lacking the required work is obviously mistaken; there would be evidence of progress, otherwise. There’s no subjectivity to this.
Which means that an incredulous student, reacting in a visceral way to a low grade, can be coaxed toward self-awareness. That student didn’t act wisely or appropriately. They didn’t complete required work — work with an authentic purpose and a connection to later work. Those are decisions; these are the repercussions of those decisions.
What their incredulity really invites is a question: “How do we fix this?“ That’s the basic logic of a Skinner box: How do I get the reward and avoid the punishment? But this, too, is the strength of a profile-based assessment system: The profiles, skill, and traits offer a clear blueprint, and it starts with the simple choice to work harder.
Use the comment section below to start that process of working harder. Ask questions, offer feedback of your own, and engage the purpose of all this, which is, in the end, to make learning more intrinsically motivated.