For the past seven months, I have been living and studying in Spain via School Year Abroad (SYA), a GDS-affiliated foreign study program. I live with a host family, whom I adore, in the center of Zaragoza, a city halfway between Madrid and Barcelona. Every day I notice cultural customs different from those in the United States: the socialization in the streets and the work-life balance, among others. In addition to these cultural differences, one academic difference is the open gradebook system, through which students at SYA receive their grades for each assignment as well as their live, cumulative grades.
From my experience at SYA, I would discourage GDS from adopting an open gradebook. The live-grading system at GDS allows teachers to post individual assignment grades on MyGDS, whereas the open gradebook system also calculates students’ cumulative grades in real time. While I acknowledge the efficiency and simplicity of the live-grading system, it is a slippery slope to an open gradebook, which would have negative consequences: the focus on grades, rather than learning, and increased stress levels.
In the spring of 2024, MyGDS provided teachers the option to directly publish students’ grades for the first time. In an article published in February of 2024, Spanish teacher Parker Benedict said the live-grading system had made it more efficient to alert students of missing assignments. English Department Chair Katherine Dunbar said she preferred working “pencil to paper.”
At SYA, Canvas is the online platform on which students and teachers interact. Like MyGDS, Canvas serves as a point of reference. There, teachers post daily homework assignments and broadcast announcements, and students can use the calendar feature as a checklist.
However, unlike at GDS, students can only access grades directly inputted into Canvas by all their teachers; students rarely receive feedback and grades on paper. The grades on individual assignments then make up the cumulative grades, which is also displayed on Canvas.
I have experienced a more intense fixation on my cumulative grades because I have an open gradebook: In February, I received a poor grade on a quiz in my environmental science class. Without an open gradebook, I would have accepted the grade and acknowledged that I needed to better prepare for the next quiz. Because I was able to see how that one quiz grade affected my cumulative grade, I spent the next few weeks watching the cumulative grade like a hawk. As teachers released grades for assignments on Canvas, I immediately checked how the assignments’ grades impacted the cumulative grade. Some days an 89.3% would turn into a 90.1%, and on other days, the grade would drop down again to an 89.3%.
These minor fluctuations in my grade are obviously not meaningful, but I found myself stuck in the habit of viewing the cumulative grade every time I opened the Canvas platform. My focus was on the grades and not on learning.
The first waypoint of GDS’s strategic vision is to foster a joyful education—having a community driven by grades contradicts that waypoint. GDS is guided by the mission to foster a love of learning; it is not guided by the notion that learning should be represented and evaluated by percentages and letter grades.
The open gradebook system would elevate GDS students’ stress levels. It’s hard to argue that there isn’t a high level of stress among students at GDS; nine of ten students I asked said they have experienced a stressful environment at GDS. Each student navigates that academic stress differently. “If I always know my grade, it feels more freeing, more liberating,” junior Sander Kearns, who is studying in Spain through SYA, said. Kearns also acknowledged that “there’s definitely a component of wanting to raise your grade rather than just produce good quality work.”
Although showing students their cumulative grades is tempting as a strategy to promote transparency, the open gradebook can cause excessive focus on grades and elevated stress levels. I strongly recommend that GDS not adopt the open gradebook system.