Faculty and lecturers in the IU Department of Biology were invited to participate in this study. Most weeks throughout the 2005 fall semester, participants were asked to respond to questions that were meant to probe their views concerning possible benefits and drawbacks of allowing undergraduates to accept more control over their educations.

The questions for this survey are listed below, with participants' responses linked to the questions.

Do you think that education largely involves trying to persuade students to do things that they would not otherwise want to do? (Week 1)

Do you think that grades tend to be used as a tool for encouraging students to do things that they would not otherwise want to do? (Week 1)

1. What effect, if any, would you guess that using the threat of a punishment to get students to do some activity would tend to have on their intrinsic motivation to do that activity?
2. What effect, if any, would you guess that using the promise of a reward to get students to do some activity would tend to have on their intrinsic motivation to do that activity? (Week 2)

What would you guess might be the main criteria that IU Biology students tend to use when deciding which courses to take in college and when deciding how much time and effort to devote to one course versus to another? (Week 3)

What criteria would you hope that IU Biology students would use when deciding which courses to take in college and when deciding how much time and effort to devote to one course versus to another? (Week 3)

What sorts of decisions about their educations do you think that IU undergraduates ought to have a voice in (e.g., decisions about the goals of their college educations, including what skills are most important to be working to learn or improve in college; the competencies that students need to demonstrate in order to be awarded a degree; the goals of each course, including what skills each course is meant to help students to improve; and the strategies that are used to help students to learn in each course)? (Week 4)

1. What are some of the main ways in which you would like for people to have been affected by having gone to college? For example, what are some of the main skills that you would like for people to have learned or improved in college?
2. What are some qualities (e.g., traits, behaviors, or attitudes) that you particularly like to see in college students? (Week 5)

1. What would you guess might be some of the main ways in which IU students tend to want to be affected by having gone to college? For example, what would you guess might be some of the main skills that students tend to care most about learning and improving in college?
2. What are some of the criteria that you think ought to be used when deciding what are the main ways in which IU should be trying to affect students? For example, what are some of the criteria that you think ought to be used when deciding what are the main skills that IU should be concerned with helping students to learn and improve? (Weeks 6 and 7)

Do you tend to agree or instead to disagree with the following statements? Why?
1. "The main, practical roles of grades are to help employers to decide whom to hire and to help admissions committees to decide whom to admit."
2. "When making decisions about what and how to learn, college students ought to carefully consider how their choices might affect their GPAs. For example, when deciding which courses to take and how much time to invest in one course versus another, students ought to carefully consider how their choices might affect their GPAs."
3. "Students ought to realize that the more that they try to challenge themselves, take chances, and search for and explore in college that which is interesting and meaningful to them, the more likely it is that their GPAs will suffer. Similarly, students ought to realize that the greater the extent to which they try to accept control over their educations (e.g., the more that they focus on learning specifically what they, themselves, consider to be most interesting and important to learn), the more likely it is that their GPAs will suffer." (Week 8)

This week's questions are meant to probe views about how much freedom our students feel that they have when making decisions about their educations. Before asking these questions, I'd like to first give a fair amount of background information:

During the 2005 spring semester, 256 students who were enrolled in IU Biology courses completed a questionnaire about grades. Below are some of the questions on that questionnaire and responses of students to those questions.

I. Have concerns about grades ever influenced any of your decisions about which courses to take in college? 74% of the students answered YES.

II. Do you think that concerns about grades will influence any of your future decisions about which courses to take? 78% answered YES.

III. When deciding how much time and effort to invest in a course, do you tend to consider how much time and effort seem to be needed to get a certain grade in that course? 90% answered YES.

IV. If you are planning to apply to medical school, what average grade for all of your courses at IU do you think that you would need to obtain in order to have a good chance of being accepted to IU Medical School (or to a similar medical school)? 33% of the students answered "A"; 53% answered "A-"; 10% answered "B+"; 4% answered "B"; and 1% answered "<B"

V. Would you tend to take courses at IU that you were very interested in if you were pretty sure that you would not get better than a B+ in each of those courses? 61% answered NO.

VI. Do you think that, in general, grades allow admissions committees and employers to get a good sense of how well a student has searched for and explored in college issues that are most meaningful to her? 89% answered NO.

VII. Do you think that, in general, grades allow admissions committees and employers to get a good sense of how well a student has learned what that student considers to be most important to learn? 77% answered NO.

Finally, here are the questions for you for this week:

1. Does it seem to you that our students tend to feel free and encouraged to take challenging courses?
2. Does it seem to you that our students tend to feel encouraged to be reflective about their educations (e.g., to carefully consider and to continually re-evaluate their views about what might be most interesting and/or useful to learn in college and to learn in each course)?
3. Does it seem to you that our students tend to feel free and encouraged to learn what they themselves consider to be most important and/or interesting to learn in college and to learn in each course?
4. Does it seem to you that our students tend to feel free and encouraged to try to discover and explore topics and issues that might be meaningful to them? (Week 9)

Suppose that students were allowed and encouraged to accept responsibility for deciding which skills to be working hardest to learn and improve while they're in college (and suppose that there were mechanisms by which students could easily determine which courses at IU were geared toward helping them to learn and improve which skills). What sorts of information do you think might be most useful to students, toward helping them to decide which skills they might most want to be working to learn and improve while in college? (Week 10)

Suppose that a group of IU COAS (College of Arts and Sciences) faculty members wanted to consider the question "What are the most important skills that IU COAS ought to be helping undergraduates to learn?" What sorts of information do you think might help these faculty members to consider that question? (Week 11)

Please explain whether and why you tend to agree or instead to disagree with the following statements.
1. Three of the main roles of college are (a) to educate, (b) to help admissions committees of professional and graduate schools to decide whom to admit, and (c) to help employers to decide whom to hire.
2. If colleges were not required nor expected to play roles (b) and (c), then there would be little reason to require instructors to assign course grades. (Week 12)

1. Do you think that students should be involved in determining the learning goals of courses in which they are enrolled?
2. Do you think that instructors should try to persuade students to accept instructors' learning goals as their own? Do you think, for example, that instructors should explain in what ways they expect that each learning goal will benefit students later in their lives? (Week 13)

In what ways, if any, do you imagine that your life as an instructor might be different if college instructors did not assign course grades (nor assign any other sort of end-of-semester, summative evaluations)? How, if at all, might you tend to view or treat teaching and students differently than you now do? (Week 14)

1. Do you think that course grades give students a fairly good idea of specifically what they have learned in each course?
2. Suppose that a) instructors were not required nor expected to help admissions committees to decide whom to admit nor to help employers to decide whom to hire and b) even without course grades, students could get a good idea of specifically what they had learned in each course. Do you think that there would still be a need to require instructors to assign course grades to students? Why or why not?
3. Students are required to take various courses. However, as far as I can tell, students tend not to be required to actually learn any specific things. (My understanding is that students aren't required to gain an "A" level of understanding of any specific declarative or procedural knowledge, for example.) Do you think that there are any specific things that every IU College of Arts and Sciences student should be required to know, to be allowed to graduate? Also, do you think that there are any specific things that every IU Biology student should be required to know, to be awarded a degree in Biology? (Note that I'm not asking for any examples of what you might think that every such student ought to be required to know; I'm just asking whether you think that there actually exist any such things.)
4. In what ways, if any, do you suppose that college students might tend to approach their educations differently if instructors did not assign course grades? (Week 15)