Use of Labor-Based Grading in a College Writing Course

By Bruce J. Berger

Spring 2025

I decided to use Labor-Based Grading (LBG) for the first time, in teaching WRT 106 – College Writing – Intensive, in Spring 2024. LBG is an approach that eschews traditional A–F grades for individual student assignments in favor of rewarding the effort, or labor, that students put into their assignments and writing. CTRL has developed resources on alternative grading (often called “ungrading”), a growing trend in higher education. In my particular version of LBG, students were guaranteed a “B” grade—without consideration of the quality of their writing—as long as they handed in all assignments on time and followed directions (e.g., they analyzed at least six sources in their annotated bibliographies). To earn grades higher than “B,” they needed to acquire specific numbers of extra points, which they could do in any variety of ways, such as writing their reaction to my critical comments on their papers or adding more than the minimum required number of journal entries to the semester-long journal.

My main reason for giving up traditional grading was my interest in having students pay more attention to my critical comments on their writing as opposed to worrying about why they received a specific grade (e.g., why 88% as opposed to 90%). Additionally, I anticipated that the use of LBG would reduce stress in most students as well as in me. For students, I anticipated a reduction in stress when they knew they could take chances with their writing—perhaps writing more freely, perhaps experimenting with different formats—without jeopardizing their grade. For me, I sought relief from what otherwise was the difficulty I often had in determining precise numerical grades for particular pieces of writing.

Based on the students’ responses and my own reaction to using LBG, I have decided to continue its use when I teach WRT 106 as well as when I teach Lit 107 – Creative Writing Across the Genres. My students on balance liked LBG as compared to traditional grading. In an anonymous survey, 69% of my students indicated that they were “okay” with LBG, because there were aspects of it that they liked. Another 15% liked it so much that they wished their other classes used LBG as well.

I also generally enjoyed the benefits of LBG. For example, I did feel less stress, because I didn’t have to deliberate about particular numerical grades. I also gained about one-third of my time as compared to what I would have spent on grading major assignments. As part of my shift to LBG, I also gave up use of quizzes on assigned readings, requiring the students instead to prepare 1.5-page summaries of the readings. Not having to grade quizzes also saved me a considerable amount of time.

Of course, there were some dissenters among my students. One concern that a student voiced was that LBG might encourage students to put off work in the LBG class and devote more time to classes with traditional grading. This did not appear to be the case for the majority of my students. My Poll Everywhere survey resulted in the following:

Because this class uses Labor-Based Grading, the following is most true about my Scholarly Essay work:

I put it off as the last thing to work on (in relation to my other classes and activities) [0%]

I felt relatively relaxed in my work and enjoyed the lower stress, but I’m unsure whether the LBG system affected my performance. [43%]

I absolutely treated it as I would have treated any other major project graded on an A-F scale [57%]

Addressing one of my major reasons for switching to LBG: I examined whether the students pay more attention to the critical comments I made on their papers. Do they? Absolutely. They were not always happy with these critical comments, but on average they spent a lot of time thinking about them, and many students earned extra points by engaging with them. In that sense, my use of LBG fulfilled the principal reason for its adoption.

Here’s an example of what I thought was a useful interchange of ideas, including an original text, my critical comment, and the student’s response:

Text: “Despite Pew Research Center data demonstrating how a higher percentage of white people report that they are gun owners, more recent data shows increasing numbers of black people purchasing guns. According to Jim Curcuruto, the director of research at the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), ‘the highest overall firearm sales increase comes from black men and women who show a 58.2 percent increase in purchases during the first six months of 2020 versus the same period last year’ (Curcuruto). Protection is mentioned as one of the main reasons U.S. gun owners own a gun (72%), with rising rates of gun ownership among Black individuals. Gun ownership is also a common self-protection measure available to many low-income people who cannot afford more expensive alternatives or do not trust law enforcement to protect them (Kates and Kleck 154).”

Instructor Comment: “This is all well and good, but I still don’t see how it advances any part of your claim. Same point for the rest of the paragraph. Even if this is all background information, by now the reader has lost the point you are trying to make unless you keep the reader focused on that point. Is this background information going to somehow support your point or not? If so, then show how.”

Student Response: “We discussed this paragraph and the organization of my overall essay during my individual meeting which I found to be very helpful because I realized that most of this paragraph was information that would be better understood later in my essay. I agreed with your point that data on rising rates of gun ownership for black people does not connect back to my claim. I believe this comment could have been more helpful if it had addressed where the background information you mentioned in the comment would be better used in the essay, though I asked this in our meeting so when revising, I knew what to do with the information. The background information and the overall paragraph is better used in a later point in my essay, where I discuss discrepancies in citizens’ opinions on gun control policies. I decided to move some of the sentences from this paragraph to a later page where I discuss gun control policies and to delete the rest of the paragraph because the data was not necessary and did not connect back to my claim.”

This example demonstrates not only that the student engaged substantively with the critical comment, but also provided feedback to me as to what would have been an even more helpful comment.

So, what was the final result in my College Writing – Intensive course in terms of grades? Out of 13 students who completed the course (which usually has 15 students), I awarded 10 “A”s, 2 “B”s, and a “C+.” The only grade lower than “B” was the result, primarily, of absences from class.

How did students’ perceptions of their writing, in terms of confidence in their own writing ability, improve by the end of the semester? Here are the results of my Poll Everywhere survey:

Are you more or less confident about your writing than you were at the beginning of the semester?

Much more confident. [0%]

A bit more confident. [25%]

About as confident as I was going into the semester, which is good. [50%]

About as confident as I was going into the semester, which could be better. [17%]

Sadly, less confident. [8%]

Only a minority of students felt more confident in their writing than they did at the beginning of the semester. But student confidence in their writing at the beginning of the semester was high, so I am not discouraged by this result. To the extent students engaged more with my critical comments, I presume that they realized how much improvement they still needed to make.

My students engaged much more thoroughly with my critical comments than they would have under traditional A–F grading.

On balance, I think the experiment worked well in terms of my intentions. My students engaged much more thoroughly with my critical comments than they would have under traditional A–F grading. I saved myself a substantial amount of time in grading. Both the students (on balance) and I experienced less stress. I will continue to use LBG, not only when I teach College Writing, but also when I teach Creative Writing. Versions of LBG might also be useful in other kinds of courses. If you are contemplating using LBG in your own course(s), feel free to reach out to me at berger@american.edu or talk to our experts at CTRL (ctrl@american.edu).

Author Profile

Bruce J. Berger, following a 40-year career as an attorney, received his MFA in Creative Writing from American University in 2018. He teaches as an adjunct in the Writing Studies Program. He is also a novelist. His novels include The Flight of the Veil (Black Rose Writing, 2020), The Music Stalker (Black Rose Writing, 2021), and To See God (Black Rose Writing, 2023). A fourth, Forgiven: A Novel will be published in 2025.

Further Reading

Carillo, E. C. (2023). Ungrading: Where we are and where we might go. Composition Studies, 51(2), 131–190.