Considerable work has been done on student evaluation of teaching/teachers, but reservations remain about its use for summative purposes. Student ratings are not universally accepted as being reliable, nor can they provide really meaningful information. Qualitative comments can provide a better understanding but they tend not to be userfriendly from lack of structure and connectedness. This study attempts to devise a method for 'quantifying' students' comments to increase their usefulness in complementing/confirming ratings. The quantified results enable the profile construction of what students regard as an effective/ineffective teacher, and enable identification of strengths and weaknesses. Our findings counter some commonly held assumptions, including those which held that high ratings are dependent on small class size and 'dumbing down' of courses and the consequent expectation of high grades. The findings also indicate that students value teaching quality more than teacher characteristics, suggesting their ability to make valid judgments about teaching effectiveness.

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This paper examines an alternative approach to grading at a public university in Singapore. Beginning in 2014, all incoming students were given a "grade-free" period of assessment. This was designed to give new students time to adjust to university life and to inspire students to approach their learning free from the worry of grades. Similar to pass/fail systems elsewhere around the world, this example of what we call "gradeless learning" reflects longterm national aims of reducing society's emphasis on letter-and number-based grades and developing a country of lifelong learners. This paper shares student and faculty reactions to the alternative approach to grading, through four surveys conducted during the 18 months following its implementation. Over 3000 responses from students and nearly 500 responses from faculty reveal both groups recognise the potential of gradeless learning to positively impact student learning and well-being, by helping students adjust to university life and encouraging them to take more academic risks without worrying about grades. However, both groups cite problems with gradeless learning, namely poor learning attitudes and behaviours, which arise when grades can no longer be relied on to motivate learning. Faculty members, in particular, feel frustrated by their lack of an active role in this alternative approach to grading, which was designed exclusively to benefit students. This study suggests that the success of gradeless learning anywhere requires the support of faculty partners, who must be integral in developing pedagogical innovations that can help de-emphasise grades as a way to motivate and measure learning.

Student-centered learning demands progressive means of assessment that enable students to view learning as a process to develop and use strategies to meet or exceed assessment expectations. Such continuous improvement is possible only when students receive continuous, timely, objective, and constructive feedback. However, most assessment tasks provide little or no information to improve or promote student learning, but instead simply provide test scores or grades that merely quantify performance. Students need to have information about the quality of their work while they work on their assessment tasks and need to comprehend what constitutes good performance. They need to understand what excellent work is and what poor work is and be able to know what they can do to improve.

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