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Researchers find lower grades given to students with surnames that come later in alphabetical order

https://phys.org/news/2024-04-grades-students-surnames-alphabetical.html

Knowing your ABCs is essential to academic success, but having a last name starting with A, B or C might also help make the grade.

Researchers find lower grades given to students with surnames that come later in alphabetical order

As graders go on grading, their comments become more frustrated and their good-will becomes much sloppier. At least that's the hypothesis to explain this. Researchers found the reverse effect on graders who sorted in reverse-alphabetical order.

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bcoffy

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I’m a graduate student who does a lot of grading. Canvas gives me an option to: 1. Hide students’ names while grading and 2. sort in order of submission instead of alphabetical order, so I make sure to use both of those options to reduce any biases like that.

cmgvd3lw

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Why in order of submission? Why not random?

bcoffy

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I only get two options: Alphabetical order and submission order. If I had random I would use it.

kurwa

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Do you think order of submission has any bias towards it?

Frozengyro

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Yes, you assume the early submitters are on top of it and do better work.

Buddahriffic

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And, even as one who rarely submitted assignments early, IMO it's fair to give the early submissions the advantage of marking fatigue bias. Kinda like a time bonus.