Teaching for Belonging: Career Readiness, Un‑Grading, and Human‑Centered Learning

How are our classes already supporting students’ career development, and what small changes might deepen that support?- Nicole O’Connell

Nicole O’Connell’s presentation, Supporting Student Futures through Career Education, draws from her Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) project involving 71 students across seven courses, O’Connell explored small, practical ways instructors can integrate career education into any class. Students in the study consistently noted that even brief, low‑lift interventions helped them feel more informed and supported. 

The project identified four strategies students found especially valuable. 

1. Regular announcements about career events, internships, and campus resources help students access information they often struggle to find on their own. As one student put it, “sharing information at the beginning of class about different organizations or events happening around UMASS is really helpful,” a reminder that simple gestures can have a meaningful impact.
2. Apparent career connections, like highlighting transferable skills or linking course content to professional contexts, helps students see the relevance of their academic work. 
3. Guest speakers offer students a window into real-world pathways, from navigating majors to imagining future careers; one student noted, “I feel more confident in my major seeing other English majors succeed.” 
4. Students appreciated when instructors were open about their own experiences, including successes, failures, and nonlinear paths. As one student encouraged, “Talk about your personal experience more.”

Nicole emphasized that these strategies do not require redesigning a course, though they do require intentionality and time. 

"Un-grading allows both students and faculty to “return to the joy of learning.”- Caroline DeVane

Caroline DeVane’s presentation, Un-grading and Unlearning in Higher Education, invited faculty to rethink the long‑standing assumptions that underpin traditional grading practices. Caroline defines un-grading as a set of pedagogical approaches that de‑emphasize or eliminate conventional letter and number grades in favor of feedback, reflection, and sustained student growth. Paired with this is the concept of un-learning—a conscious process through which both educators and students let go of ingrained beliefs about what assessment “should” look like in order to create space for more authentic learning.

DeVane highlighted several well‑documented problems with traditional grading:

• Grades tend to collapse rich, multidimensional learning into a single, often subjective symbol
• Research shows that the same work can receive inconsistent marks across graders and contexts. 
• Grades frequently shift student attention from curiosity to optimization—what Kruglanski et al. (1977) describe as a “minimax strategy,” where students focus on the least effort required for the highest reward.
• The presence of grades undermines intrinsic motivation, reducing risk‑taking, creativity, and collaboration (Deci & Ryan, 2000)

Rather than framing un-grading as an all‑or‑nothing transformation, DeVane presented it as a spectrum of possibilities. Small shifts, like 

• incorporating low‑stakes assignments
• adding opportunities for self‑assessment
• de-centering points

can shift classroom culture toward deeper learning. More structured models, including contract grading, specifications grading, and portfolio‑based assessment, offer scalable alternatives that maintain accountability while supporting student agency. Even in institutions where grades cannot be eliminated, DeVane emphasized that faculty can meaningfully redirect students’ focus from grade‑seeking to learning.

Interested in learning more about un-grading? Check out the following resources:

• Designing Your Course for Un-Grading - a Guide
• Using Ungrading to Get Students to Think about Their Work

“Learning is emotional before it is cognitive.”- Xiaojing (Jing) Shi

Jing Shi argues that effective teaching begins with recognizing that learning is emotional before it is cognitive. Students decide whether to participate long before they decide how to participate. That initial decision hinges on whether the classroom feels psychologically safe. This is especially true for shy, anxious, first‑generation, or returning students, who often assess the interpersonal climate before engaging academically. By foregrounding humanity in the classroom, instructors create an environment where students feel comfortable taking intellectual risks.

Jing challenges traditional teaching models where the instructor functions primarily as an authoritative expert and students as passive receivers. Jing advocates for a more human‑centered model grounded in trust, curiosity, and collaboration. This shift does not eliminate instructor authority; rather, it reframes it as approachable authority, making the instructor a real person students can connect with. When students perceive their instructor as both competent and human, engagement becomes less about compliance and more about genuine investment in the course.

To illustrate how small human moments can transform a learning environment, Jing shared a lighthearted classroom activity: asking students for ideas on how to “wake her up” if she ever looked tired. The exercise reduced pressure, invited humor, and signaled that imperfection is welcome. Over time, the tone of the course shifted: more students stayed after class, shy students began asking questions, and overall energy became more open and collaborative. The underlying mechanisms, she noted, included reducing power distance, modeling vulnerability, granting students implicit permission to participate, and using humor to lower the stakes of being wrong.

Jing emphasized that being human is not the same as lowering standards. Clarity, consistency, and compassion can coexist. When students feel respected, they often work harder. She offered several low‑cost, high‑impact practices instructors can adopt immediately:

• acknowledging one’s emotions or mistakes
• sharing enthusiasm or frustration
• using inclusive humor
• asking for small bits of student input
• incorporating check‑in questions
• making space for brief non-content interactions

Over time, these practices build trust, which enables risk-taking, which in turn fuels learning. As Jing concluded, students don’t disengage from material. Students disengage from environments. Building a human-centered classroom, therefore, is not a teaching style but a teaching infrastructure.