Thoughts on "From Degrading to De-Grading"

So far in the semester, I have had difficulty with maintaining my blog posts. Although the idea of keeping a blog and responding to assigned articles seeming exciting to me at first, I have begun to consider the reflective writing as more of a burden than an expression of thought. In the past, I have had a blog and published regularly with little difficulty, and had expected the same for this blog. The fact that up keeping this blog had been in a course syllabus and the readings assigned, however, seems to have discouraged me to write freely about my thoughts. Even though this blog is not evaluated according to a rubric, I still have had difficulty encouraging myself to voice my opinion on the assigned articles.

The article "From Degrading to De-Grading," by Alfie Kohn, discusses the negative implications of grading systems on student motivation, a topic that I found myself relating to. The publication discusses the difference between the "grading orientation" and "learning orientation", claiming that the former is the root cause for students to have less interest in learning. By enforcing a grading policy on assignments, students tend to focus more on the numbers that will define their grade rather than the quality of their work. This article has made me realize that I need to reevaluate the way I think about my assignments, not only for my freshman writing course, but also for all of the other courses I am taking this semester. Despite not having a solid grading system for my blog posts, I have been stuck thinking about the fact that maintaining a blog counts for a portion of 100 points for my writing course, and this quantitative value has negatively impacted how I perform in my blogging efforts. Having had successfully maintained a blog in the past in my personal time and had no difficulty then, I feel that thinking of my posts as assignments, not just as grades, has dissuaded me from succeeding in maintaining blog posts thus far.

After reading this article, I am going to focus my efforts on transforming my perspective to a "learning orientation" rather than a "grade/assignment orientation." I feel that if I am able to successfully make this change, I will be more motivated to perform my best in all of my assignments this semester.