Contract Grading: A Guide for Instructors

Aims and Benefits

Contract grading aims to:

• Incentivize the learning process over the product: Prioritizes engagement with –  and enjoyment of – learning by promoting intrapersonal standards (“becoming the best you can be”) over interpersonal comparison (“becoming better than your peers”). Values iterative growth over static achievement.
• Promote student agency and minimize student anxiety: Gives students greater autonomy in how they meet the instructor’s clearly defined expectations, enabling risk-taking and new challenges while reducing the uncertainty and high stakes of traditional grading.
• Enhance Fairness: Seeks to reduce disparities by focusing on effort and improvement rather than initial ability or subjective judgments.
• Align grading with the joys of teaching and learning for instructors: Keeps the focus on student work, feedback, and growth, rather than sorting students into fixed grade categories. Encourages engagement with instructor comments and reflection on progress.
• Provide a clear route to success: Proactively defines the tasks and behaviors required for each grade, reducing ambiguity and making expectations more attainable.

Types of Grading Contracts

Four broad approaches to contract grading are discussed below. Not all approaches will be suitable for all academic contexts. These approaches need not be mutually exclusive.

As you read through these approaches, you might consider:

• Which approach(es) best align(s) with the intended learning outcomes of your course? Why?
• Which specific aspects of said approach(es) resonate with you? Why?
• Can you think of any potential benefits and drawbacks of implementing said approach(es)?
• How might you incorporate said approach(es) into your curriculum?

Mastery-Oriented Grading Contracts: The “Revise & Resubmit” Approach

Iterative assessment of student work focuses on scaffolded, incremental progress towards mastery of course learning outcomes. Clear assignment rubrics highlight the skills and components required and guide instructor feedback through the revise and resubmit process.

Distinctive Feature

Continual assessment with a focus on feedback and improvement rather than a final, unchangeable grade.

Process

For each assignment, if the student's submission:

• Meets all relevant criteria: they receive full credit.
• Demonstrates genuine engagement, yet fails to meet the relevant criteria: they are given a placeholder partial credit grade, detailed feedback on how to improve their work to meet the relevant standard(s), and the option to revise and resubmit for a new grade (typically, full points).

Examples

• Why College? 2022 syllabus (pp. 3-5)
• Experiments in Learning: Mastery Learning (Cynthia Bailey Lee)

Specifications-Based Grading Contracts: The “Assignment Bundle” Approach

The grading contract outlines set bundles of assignments that correspond to specific grades. The more challenging or numerous the bundles, the higher the grade. Students select the option that works best for them, which also supports their agency.

Distinctive Feature

Allows students to select the grade they want to work towards.

Process

At the beginning of the course, the student selects the level of achievement they want to aim for. Completing a specific bundle of assignments at a satisfactory level earns the corresponding grade.

For example, a student aiming for a “B” grade may complete a basic set of tasks, while a student aiming for an “A” grade may complete additional projects or more complex tasks.

Examples

• UNL Center for Transformative Teaching: “What is Specifications Grading?” (Table 1: “Example of Specification Grading Using Bundles for Determining Student Grades”)
• Specifications Grading in the University of Edinburgh’s Fundamentals of Algebra & Calculus Course

“Ungrading” Contracts: The “Self-Evaluation” Approach

Students assess their own performance based on predefined, instructor-provided criteria. Students and instructors then work together to negotiate the final grade.

Distinctive Feature

Involves collaborative evaluation between students and instructors.

Process

At the beginning of the course, the instructor provides students with a rubric that outlines grading criteria for final course grades. At the end of the course, students submit a reflective self-assessment aligned with the rubric. Instructors and students discuss the self-assigned grade and reach a consensus.

Examples

• How to Ungrade, Jesse Stommel (2018)

Labor-Based Contract Grading: The “Effort Over Performance” Approach

This is one of the most common contract grading approaches, as well as one of the most controversial. The contract highlights that grades are determined by the amount of work put into tasks, rather than the quality of the output. Some students and instructors may perceive this approach as lacking rigor, as the grading contract need not directly assess quality. This approach should be used at the instructor’s discretion, if appropriate for the relevant learning context.

Distinctive Feature

Emphasizes process over product.

Process

Students collaborate with the instructor to co-create a course-wide contract at the start of the term, specifying the quantity of work required for each grade. The baseline grade (usually a “B”) is guaranteed if the student completes the agreed-upon labor.

In some variations of this approach, students are given the opportunity to revise the contract in the middle of the term.

Examples

• Labor-Based Contract Template, Asao Inue (ASU)
• Labor-Based Grading Resource, Barnard College/Columbia University
• Labor-Based Grading Contract in a Literature Course

Implementing Contract Grading

Some instructors might be ready to wholly adopt contract grading at the course level, while others might prefer to integrate smaller elements of contract grading approaches within their current grading system at the assignment level.

Assignment-Level Practices Aligned with Contract Grading

• Use rubrics and/or transparent assignment design to explicitly outline how students can succeed at the given task.
• Allow retakes, revisions, and resubmissions to foster a growth mindset and minimize student anxiety.
• Offer options that allow students to select between pre-defined assignment bundles (e.g., a final paper or a final project).
• Allow bulk points for bulk tasks. For example, award full points for performance beyond a threshold, such as correctly responding to at least 8/10 questions, and so on.
• Employ continuous grading practices that prioritize lower-stakes, formative feedback over higher-stakes, infrequent assignments.
• Encourage students’ self-assessment, with exit tickets or reflection prompts, for example.
• Avoid grading systems that rank students and inherently pit them against one another. 

Course-Level Considerations to Facilitate the Transition to Contract Grading

Adapted from DasBender et al. (2022), here are several steps instructors can take to identify the contract grading practices that best align with the intended learning outcomes of a course:

• Carefully identify course learning outcomes.
  What knowledge should students gain from this course?
  What student behaviors will lead to the acquisition of this knowledge?
• Evaluate course assessment systems in light of learning outcomes.
  How will student skills/knowledge be valued and rewarded?
  How will assessment encourage the development of new skills/knowledge?
• Establish a baseline of the work needed for students to achieve the learning outcomes.
  What activities will students need to complete? Why?
• Establish transparent, explicit criteria for each of these activities.
  What, specifically, will students need to do to successfully complete these activities?
• Establish mechanisms for detailed, constructive, and frequent feedback on student submissions.
  What mechanisms will you use to impart feedback?
  What mechanisms will you use to reward/incentivize student engagement with feedback?

Complementary Learning-Oriented Grading Strategies

For instructors who want to promote the fairness and learning orientation of contract grading but are not yet prepared to make changes to their assignments or course design, two complementary grading practices are highlighted below.

Instructors can consider adopting these grading practices as an intermediate step to eventually integrating contract grading in their course design. 

Anonymous Grading

Knowledge of extraneous student characteristics (e.g., a student’s prior performance in the course) can lead to unintentional grading bias. Anonymous grading attempts to circumvent this bias by obfuscating student names during the assessment process.

Potential strategies include:

• Students write their names on a separate page (i.e., cover or last page) that can be hidden during the evaluation process
• Instructors grade through a Learning Management System (LMS) compatible with anonymous grading, such as Canvas’s Anonymous Grading Tool.

Temporary Grade Withholding

To encourage meaningful engagement with feedback, some instructors release comments before grades. This works best when paired with a clear explanation and structured opportunities for students to engage with that feedback.

Potential strategies include:

• Students respond to feedback before the grade is assigned, supporting agency and self-advocacy. Instructors may elect to adjust grades in light of student responses.
• Students write a brief reflection on what they learned from the feedback and how they will apply it. Instructors may award points for these reflections to encourage engagement.

References

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• Barnard College. Labor-Based Grading. https://barnard.edu/labor-based-grading. Accessed 26 May 2025.
• Bell, K. (2018). “Gameful Design: A Potential Game Changer.” EDUCAUSE Review 53 (3).
• Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning. “Authentic Assessment.” Indiana University Bloomington, https://citl.indiana.edu/teaching-resources/assessing-student-learning/authentic-assessment/index.html. Accessed 26 May 2025.
• Center for Transformative Teaching. “What Is Contract Grading?” University of Nebraska–Lincoln, https://teaching.unl.edu/resources/alternative-grading/contract-grading/. Accessed May 26, 2025.
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Source and Acknowledgements

This is a modified version of a longer resource. Those interested in the full document can email Matthew Palmer at mwpalmer@stanford.edu for a copy. Comments, feedback, and suggestions are also welcome.

Contributors: Matthew Palmer

Acknowledgements: Thank you to Kritika Yegnashankaran, who provided extensive feedback throughout the development of this resource. I would also like to thank Andrei Baltakmens, Yunshu Fan, Jamie Imam, Kenneth Ligda, Amanda Modell, Beth Seltzer, Jesse Streicher, Melissa Tamas, and Gloriana Trujillo for their insightful suggestions.

The infographics included in this article were generated by the author (Matthew Palmer) using open-access illustrations from Irasutoya (www.irasutoya.com), in accordance with their terms of use.