🛡️ Shifting the Grade: Increasing Academic Integrity with Process-Based Grading

[Zac_Chase]

Higher Ed Integrity

🛡️ Shifting the Grade: Increasing Academic Integrity with Process-Based Evaluation

Designing university-level assessments that evaluate structural drafts, peer review, and authentic student voice.

📌 The Pedagogy-First Rule: True academic integrity isn't built on digital surveillance or flawed AI detectors. By restructuring course milestones to grade the progressive steps of a project—such as initial outlines and live peer feedback—we naturally encourage original student expression.

🧬 Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Alignment:

This assessment flow supports the CAST UDL Action & Expression Guidelines by helping students develop personal goal-setting, managing individual executive function, and scaffolding intermediate, reflective check-ins.

Relying entirely on a final term paper leaves assessments vulnerable to shortcuts. This challenge introduces you to using Gemini as a collaborative partner to easily restructure major coursework, establishing formative feedback loops that emphasize student growth and original research methods.

---

Your Active Learning Steps

1️⃣ LEARN: Complete This Free Module (45 mins)

Log in to the Google Certification Launchpad to earn your micro-credential for this core session:

🎓 Create process-based assessments

Establish evaluation parameters that grade draft revisions, methodology choices, and student critiques.

Launch Module (GES 4.5) ↗

2️⃣ TRY: Build a Process-Evaluation Framework

We're leveraging Harvard Graduate School of Education's Project Zero and their developmental I Used to Think... Now I Think... routine as a core part of the grading requirements. Use Gemini to draft your process assignment details:

📋 Copy and paste this prompt template into Gemini:

"Act as an instructional designer. I want to redesign my [course/subject] research project to increase academic integrity through process-based grading. Draft a project timeline with three distinct evaluation steps: 1) initial draft structural plan, 2) recorded 1-minute peer-review feedback logs, and 3) a final written essay accompanied by an 'I Used to Think... Now I Think...' reflection tracking their changing ideas."

3️⃣ REFLECT: Share Your Experience Below

Once you have run your process-based lesson, let's learn together! Scroll to the comment section of this page and post your reflection using Project Zero's "I Used to Think... Now I Think..." routine.

✏️ Copy-Paste Template for Comments:

🤔 I used to think: [How you previously attempted to ensure academic integrity in assignment submissions]
💡 Now I think: [How grading progressive steps and structural logic changes your view of student evaluation]

Explore more routines in the Harvard PZ Thinking Routines Toolbox.

🎓 Ready to explore the full curriculum?

Boost your instructional practice with the complete set of free, micro-learning modules.

Explore the Full GES Course Catalog ↗