When I first came to Penn, I would regularly include an essay prompt for students in my introductory philosophy courses: “Create and answer your own question. You will be graded on the quality of both the question and the answer.” For students just starting out in my discipline, such an exercise can add an extra layer of challenge to the existing challenge of learning the art of doing philosophy. But more often than not, students would eagerly rise to the challenge, and creative and exciting topics and thinking would emerge in response to this prompt. Over the years, though, the number of students selecting this option dwindled, until almost nobody selected it. Curious, I asked a class once why they didn’t opt for that prompt, and one student quickly answered, “Because there are two ways of failing—in creating and in answering the question.”

This is one anecdote about one assignment, and this is just one student’s attitude, but it encapsulates what seems to be an increasing fear of failure, and thus, an increasing concern among some students about their grades. Moreover, this concern with grades can get in the way of what I take to be crucial elements of the educational mission of a university, namely enabling students to push themselves intellectually by taking difficult courses, to pursue unfamiliar subjects outside of their comfort zone and to immerse themselves with enthusiasm in a course’s content for its own sake rather than with an eye constantly on the grade they hope to earn.

In order to tackle this inordinate focus on getting good grades, I’ve tried a number of strategies and am constantly on the lookout for more. Here are two strategies that I’ve recently employed with notable success.

First, since the concern with grades is directly related to course assessment—the activities we ask our students to do in order to earn their grades —my first goal was to devise ways of assessing my students such that the students would care about the projects for their own sake, and such that the specter of the grade would fade in importance in students’ minds. One of the students’ favorites assessments in my Introduction to Early Modern (1600-1800) Philosophy is the Anonymous Correspondence assignment, an assignment suggested to me by Adrienne Prettyman at Bryn Mawr College. In this project, I pair students, assign each student to take on a philosophical persona and assign each student pair a philosophical topic we have not addressed in class to debate. For example, a pair of students could be assigned the personae of René Descartes and Margaret Cavendish, and they could be assigned to discuss the nature and treatment of non-human animals. The students do not know their partner’s identity, and they exchange letters for several weeks on an electronic platform such as EtherPad or Top Hat.

Much philosophy in the early modern period was conducted in private correspondences, often between correspondents living at some distance from one another. Some correspondences were mediated by third parties, and of these, some were anonymous. Correspondences were slow. It is a mode of communication starkly different from many contemporary ways of communicating, such as through emails and texts and various social media platforms. This is the first feature of the assignment that draws students into an interesting world and a different way of thinking and communicating. A second feature that draws the students into the activity for its own sake is the challenge and complexity of the assignment coupled with the opportunity for playfulness. For not only do students need to think themselves into an often-foreign philosophical framework and argue from that framework for their positions, but they have to understand the philosophical framework of their interlocutor and engage in a discussion that pays due heed to commitments of their partner’s persona. In addition, students often seek out interesting tidbits about the philosophers, such as Cavendish’s penchant for fine fabrics and sewing, so that they can work these details into their letters. A shift in focus away from the grade is also helped by the mystery of their writing partner’s identity—the wondering, guessing and anticipation of finding out which face in the lecture crowd is behind the exchange of ideas. The excitement that students bring to their execution of their letters is palpable in our discussions during office hours, and even in the quality of the letters themselves.

A second technique to lessen student concern with grades is to offer a course devoted to a project that feels so urgently important to the students that the grade becomes of minimal consequence to them. There are many such course models, but the kind of course that I have made a staple of my offerings precisely for this virtue is the Academically-Based Community Service (ABCS) course.

One ABCS course I teach proceeds as follows: the Penn undergraduates and I meet during the week to discuss the philosophical topic of the course—for example, the philosophy of education—and then, on the weekends, the Penn students engage with local high school students around these topics. The syllabus for the course is largely created by the Penn students as they identify topics within the theme and locate readings for the class to read. On the basis of the seminar discussion during the week, a team of three or four of the undergraduates design a lesson plan to teach to the high school students. On Saturday mornings, then, the high school students come to Penn’s campus, and the Penn undergraduates teach the material to the high school students. After an hour and a half of hard work, we head over to the philosophy department lounge for lunch, which will often extend late into the afternoon as friendships develop, form and cement. About halfway through the semester, we switch gears on Saturdays to start preparing the high school students for a conference at the end of the semester where the high school students present their own original papers on some aspect of the philosophy of education. The conference is open to the public and is attended by members of the University community as well as friends, family members, teachers and supporters of the high school presenters. In the lead-up to the conference—during one of the busiest times of the Penn students’ term—the undergraduates often meet with their high school charges for extra weekend hours, after school, and often late into the night coaching and encouraging the younger students as they near the ‘finish line.’ The Penn student’s grade is in no way bound up with the degree of success of the high school student’s presentation, but the undergraduates nonetheless commit themselves completely to the course, and they display a level of dedication to the success of their younger counterparts that is heartwarming to witness. The Penn students’ focus is completely outside of themselves and on the struggles and triumphs of the high school students.

The ABCS course model, which calls students to look outward to the community and to think about productive and respectful ways in which they can engage with the wider world, tends to minimize in students’ minds the importance of the grade. And in my experience, these courses achieve this end—shifting student focus away from grades and toward the intrinsic value of the educational project—more effectively than any other course I have taught or any other technique I have tried.

Karen Detlefsen is professor of philosophy in SAS.

This essay continues the series that began in the fall of 1994 as the joint creation of the College of Arts and Sciences, the Center for Teaching and Learning and the Lindback Society for Distinguished Teaching.

See https://almanac.upenn.edu/talk-about-teaching-and-learning-archive for previous essays.