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U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades

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131–140 of 284 posts

Re: U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades

#131
post #41

I work in academia. When we grade exams, the order of the exams on the stack is the order in which they were collected in the room (people can sit wherever they like). For grading, we are usually 5 people in a single room, and everyone grades a specific exercise for consistency. The exams are getting shuffled heavily , with everyone just grabbing stacks, looking for exams where "their" exercise was not yet graded, an…

Everything in this thread just randomizes who doesn't get graded fairly.

Re: U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades

#133
With huge grade inflation in US universities, all students are already getting better grades than they really deserve. The amount of gymnastics that professors do to pass all students is insane. So, no student is really receiving a lower grade.

Re: U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades

#134
post #41

I work in academia. When we grade exams, the order of the exams on the stack is the order in which they were collected in the room (people can sit wherever they like). For grading, we are usually 5 people in a single room, and everyone grades a specific exercise for consistency. The exams are getting shuffled heavily , with everyone just grabbing stacks, looking for exams where "their" exercise was not yet graded, an…

Everything in this thread just randomizes who doesn't get graded fairly.

For a single assignment, yes. But at least randomization might mitigate the effect across a term.

Re: U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades

#135

This is basically the reason my kids have the last name that they do. My last name starts with E and my wife's with Y. Bucking tradition, she didn't change her name when we got married, so when we had kids we had to decide what name to give them. We opted to hyphenate. Historically, hyphenated last names were [Woman's last name]-[Man's last name]. However, my wife hated that her last name was near the end of the alph…

Wow, you really gave your children a headstart there :)

Re: U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades

#136
post #41

I work in academia. When we grade exams, the order of the exams on the stack is the order in which they were collected in the room (people can sit wherever they like). For grading, we are usually 5 people in a single room, and everyone grades a specific exercise for consistency. The exams are getting shuffled heavily , with everyone just grabbing stacks, looking for exams where "their" exercise was not yet graded, an…

When I saw the title I would have thought that the higher concentrations of Asian names starting with V, W, X, Y, Z would have led to higher grades at that end of the alphabet, and thought that effect would have eclipsed anything else.

Re: U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades

#137
post #41

I work in academia. When we grade exams, the order of the exams on the stack is the order in which they were collected in the room (people can sit wherever they like). For grading, we are usually 5 people in a single room, and everyone grades a specific exercise for consistency. The exams are getting shuffled heavily , with everyone just grabbing stacks, looking for exams where "their" exercise was not yet graded, an…

In around the year 2000 I had an essay due that day I had forgotten, and about ten minutes of computer lab time before home room in the morning. I wrote an introduction and conclusion; then filled the remainder with copy pasted chunks of the introduction and conclusion. The thought being at least I’d get a laugh. If anyone had read the thing it would have been clear it was nonsense.

I received an 80% with no notes or markup.

I have been left wondering for the last 25 years how much student work is actually even reviewed.

I work in EdTech and every time we add a feature that requires manual teacher review of student work you will see that some teachers are VERY diligent while others never touch it.

Re: U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades

#138
post #15

As someone whose initials are Z and W, I tend to notice alpha sort a lot. Asking a friend whose initials are A and B about this, it's not something they ever noticed. I haven't noticed a grading/ranking difference, but far more frequently I'll hear that "oh, we ran out of item/time/etc. before we got to you", which has made me much more sensitive to issues of planning/organization.

Outside of school I can’t think of even a single instance of alphabetical sorting of my name (I have a middle letter). What situations are you in that this comes up a lot?

Yeah I don't think it really happens outside school, but school is pretty formative and it happens all the time in school.

Re: U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlikely. If you talk with anyone who's done grading, this will likely jive with our experience and make us data aware of the outcomes. Like anything, with grading you can get into a flow, and the more you process an assignment, the more answers you've seen and those can change how you grade future answers

I really doubt you can notice a 0.6% discrepancy anecdotally. They only detected it in the study because of the massive amount of data they used. Classic confirmation bias.

Anecdotally, I would go back and adjust grades on individual problems from earlier in the stack.

I can very easily notice my own over strictness from early in the stack.

Re: U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades

#140
post #15

As someone whose initials are Z and W, I tend to notice alpha sort a lot. Asking a friend whose initials are A and B about this, it's not something they ever noticed. I haven't noticed a grading/ranking difference, but far more frequently I'll hear that "oh, we ran out of item/time/etc. before we got to you", which has made me much more sensitive to issues of planning/organization.

This reminds me of a funny event when in fourth of fifth grate. When the class was supposed to stand in line we always had to sort based on last name. My last name started with Ö (Last letter in alphabet in the Nordics) so I always ended up last. Then one time, the teacher said something like "Let's reverse the order today, but wait, we also sort on the first name". My first name starts with an A so I ended up last in line anyway, much to the joy of everyone :)
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