Feedback -- How? How much?
Feedback is the reason we have not remained moderately complex organic molecules in a primordial soup, and feedback plus spirited enterprise is a hard combination to beat as a strategy to increase your abilities. You will have a lot of feedback in this course. The spirited enterprise is up to you.

Feedback will take the form of extensive comments on exams, problem sets, and project reports -- anything that you hand in. In addition, for roughly the last third of the semester, Wednesday classes will be canceled. In their place, I will meet weekly with each of you individually or in small groups, both to help you make progress on your research projects and to deal with whatever other difficulties may arise.

Grading
Grading is something different from feedback. It is an attempt to shoehorn into very few categories what is a diverse set of experiences. Individually tailored feedback can address the diversity. Grading cannot. Grades are based on a model of authority. I know the answer and you don't. I know the value of what you have done and you don't.

I will not quantify that which is unquantifiable nor assign any grade until forced to do so by the powers that be, i.e. at the end of the semester. I find that objectifying humans exacts from me a psychic cost, leaving me with less time and energy to do things for the class that would be more valuable. So I won't do it. However, I will notify you the moment the thought crosses my mind that you are heading for an overall grade below C.

But at the end of the semester, the beast must be fed, and I'll do something. It is against my nature to do any task, even the most trivial, in an arbitrary fashion, so whatever grade emerges will be based somehow on my perceptions gathered over the semester, particularly from my observation of what you became able to do by the end.

Here's what I will look at:

Problem Sets and Study Questions	No. Problem sets and study questions lie at the heart of this course. Much time will be spent in class on them, and I expect that you'll spend even more time out of class. I encourage you to hand in your responses to problem sets, particularly to those questions you're unsure about. ...but problem sets will not be graded, at least not directly (see discussion of exams). Your work will certainly be looked at, and you'll lots of comments... but no grades. Questionnaires are very valuable to me, and maybe to you, but they will not be graded.
Exams	Yes. Exams will not be given letter grades, but you will get considerable feedback, and I'll certainly consider them carefully at the end of the semester.
Research Project	The research project -- in its written form and the final symposium presentation -- will count a lot, a whole lot. After all, a major aim of the course is to enable you to conduct a legitimate research project (broadly interpreted) and present its results.
Attendance	No. Slavery was abolished more than 100 years ago. Come and go as you think best.
Class Discussion	No. Discussion is important to make this course work, but it isn't graded.

How will I know where I stand in class?
Considering the detailed feedback you will get for every exam and for some other assignments and considering our individual meetings, you should gain a pretty good idea of my views. Your time, like mine, would be better spent worrying less about where you stand on an arbitrary five-level scale and worrying more about how to get to where you would like to stand in your life.

Why so... different from everyone else?
It's possible, perhaps likely, that most classes you've taken here and elsewhere have not embraced the same philosophy concerning grading, but what I described is actually a viewpoint that many hold besides myself, for example:

Duckworth E (1978). The having of wonderful ideas. Harvard Educ Rev 13:108-122. (password required)

Harlen W, Crick RD (2003). Testing and motivation for learning. Assessment in Education 10:169-207.

Kohn A (1994). Grading: The issue is not how but why. Educational Leadership 52:38-41.

Pollio H, Beck H (2000). When the tail wags the dog: Perceptions of learning and grade orientation in, and by, contemporary college students and faculty. J Higher Educ 71:84-102.