Last May 2024 I attended The Grading Conference and heard about a unique and novel assignment called “Pink Time”. Pink Time is based on the work of Daniel Pink who writes and speaks about intrinsic motivation. The basic idea is that if you give people free time and autonomy over “time, task, team, and technique” they will be self-motivated, more innovative, and better at solving problems. Pink Time was developed into an assignment for post-secondary by Tim Baird and David Knoila from Virginia Tech, and they made a whole website about it called Pink Time. The front page of the website says “So how does it work? Skip class. Do whatever you want. Grade yourself.” And that’s it in a nutshell. Basically you give students class time, let them do anything with that time, and then there is a self-evaluation rubric provided on the website for students to complete. One last component of the assignment in sharing back with the larger group what you did. After hearing about this assignment at the Grading Conference it intrigued me, and seemed to align well with my playful, somewhat rebellious, ungrading teaching style. I kept the idea in my proverbial back pocket. In the fall I saw that out of my three classes one was on Wednesdays and had absolutely no break from statutory holidays (only on Mondays) or reading break (which fell on Thursday and Friday). There was one week mid-semester where I had to be away for another professional obligation so I thought it was perfectly timed to assign Pink Time to this class. 

As I prepared to give the Pink Time assignment instructions to my students I hesitated. Should I say it has to be course-related? I was tempted, but I convinced myself to stick with the original intention of the assignment and leave it wide open, with the caveat that they would need to complete the self-evaluation rubric and share back in both the whole class and a small group discussion. I created an assignment on Brightspace where students submitted their self-evaluation and gave them back a mark out of 3 for the grade book based on their self-evaluation. Since Pink Time was not part of my original syllabus for the course I explained that it would be evaluated as part of Learner Professionalism, which was already one the components of the assessment of the course. I emailed the students a few days before class letting them know that we would not be having a regular class that week and with the instructions for Pink Time. This gave them autonomy to complete their Pink Time during the class time on the Wednesday, or at a different time during the week if they preferred. They just needed to spend two hours doing Pink Time. As Pink Time day approached I became excited. What would they do with their time? What would I do if someone gave me two free hours to do anything? Maybe pull out some art supplies and make some art. What would you do with two free hours? 

As you can imagine, students completed a wide array of tasks, projects, and ideas for Pink Time. A few students engaged in course-related tasks such as figuring out the audio to listen to textbooks and readings while they were out walking, revisiting a prior film from the course that they had skipped over, and choosing one of the course topics and taking a deeper dive into it by doing research and reading. The two students who spent Pink Time figuring out their audio situation intrigued me. I can just imagine wanting to listen to my readings on audio again and again but never having the time to figure out how so just going ahead with reading them and being frustrated that I was not able to listen while walking or cooking. Having Pink Time let these students hit the pause button on their reading, go and figure out their technology, and then hit un-pause and move forward being able to listen. What a gift for everyone! Other students did projects unrelated to the course, such as learning to cook a new type of pastry. Another did a project that would be helpful to other students involving researching university social work programs. One student took time time for self-care and relaxation. It was interesting to see some of the students use the time to experiment, break rules, or try something in a new way. 

Back in class the next week we started by going around and each student sharing a brief few sentences summarizing their Pink Time, then I sent the students out in Break Out groups for further explanation and discussion. Did the assignment have a direct impact on students meeting the course learning outcomes? For some, yes, for others, not so much. I believe that two of the most powerful components of this assignment are the self-reflection on learning that happens in the self-evaluation rubric and the sharing back in class. These help students flex their meta-cognitive muscles by forcing them to consider and explain their choices, motivation, strategies, techniques, and learning. Aside from building metacognitive muscle I think the other main function of this assignment was relationship building between the students and me, the instructor. By giving students autonomy over a little tiny slice of the course students got to see that I trusted them and valued their self-determination. Reading and hearing about what students chose to do with Pink Time was both surprising and delightful and gave me a glimpse into a tiny slice of their world and who they are as people.  

Pink Time is an assignment I will continue keep in my back pocket and pull out when the time is right and I feel inspired to connect with my students through this unique shared experience. 

Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash