Episode 22: Joshua Eyler

“Kids are born curious. The structure of schooling—standardized tests, boxed curricula—often kills that curiosity.”

“There are no shortcuts. We must design learning experiences that are meaningful, relevant, and worth doing.”

In this 23rd episode of The Opposite of Cheating Podcast, Joshua talks to Tricia about how our 20th century systems of grading can harm student learning, exacerbate structural inequalities, and erode intrinsic motivation. Together, they wrestle with this notion of "harm", lament that removing grades isn't the "magic bullet" solution to stopping cheating, and challenge the myth that its the job of colleges and universities to prepare students for work.

Joshua Eyler is Senior Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching & Learning and Director of the ThinkForward Quality Enhancement Plan at the University of Mississippi, where he is also on the faculty in the Department of Teacher Education. Josh is the author of Failing Our Future: How Grades Harm Students and What We Can Do about It (John Hopkins University Press, 2024) and How Humans Learn: The Science and Stories behind Effective College Teaching (WVU, 2018).

You can follow Josh at https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshua-eyler-88583338/ and Josh would like to recommend that you check out his colleague Emily Pitts Donahoe's newsletter "Unmaking the Grade" at https://emilypittsdonahoe.substack.com/

(Disclaimer: episode quotes and summary were created using Youtube's Transcript and ChatGPT and edited by a human. Any errors are the responsibility of the human).