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

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

#191

Post by 2cynykyl »

verdverm wrote: post #139
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For sure. I also find I have to update my rubric to give more/less part marks, which also requires going back. It takes about 10-15 papers grades before things settle down.

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

#192

Post by lelanthran »

jedberg wrote: post #127

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…

> Bucking tradition, she didn't change her name when we got married,

Unless you were married earlier than the 90s, I wouldn't really call that "bucking tradition" any time from, say, the mid-90s onwards.

If you really want to buck tradition, then don't get married - just live together, and have kids :-)

(After all, there's nothing more traditional than marriage, is there?)

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

#193

Post by wcunning »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #42
zdw wrote: 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?

My daily standup is run by the order my boss sees the participants in the JIRA board -- My first name starts with W, so I'm last in that list. Makes staying engaged the whole meeting hard...

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

#194

Post by karaterobot »

spullara wrote: post #131
lqet wrote: 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.

Is there a better solution? It's not for teachers to be perfect. Since that's not possible, it's not a solution.

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

#195

Post by libria »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #42
zdw wrote: 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?

Probably every single health or wellness "Find a Provider" portal lists them A-Z. That's a multi-billion dollar industry. If I was Dr. Zachary Zane, I'd change my name.

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

#196

Post by CamelCaseName »

itronitron wrote: post #181
zdw wrote: 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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelda_Williams

Do you have something to say about this? I'm confused, why did I read this wikipedia page?

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

#197

Post by bandrami »

lqet wrote: 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…

We tried a lot of things. What eventually worked was ending grades. You mastered the material or you did not; perhaps a couple of students mastered it with high marks.

Obvs this takes an administration that is OK with that, which most aren't.

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

#198

Post by jcla1 »

cvwright wrote: post #122
jcla1 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like an organisational nightmare to be honest. You'd be going through the pile of exams multiple times (at least twice) and what do you do if there are multiple mistakes that are common in a single exam question? Also: if you're sorting into "mistakes piles" for single exercises, how can you parallelise marking of separate and independent questions?

Teach at a broke public university, and you never have to juggle huge teams of TAs.

I do (I'm a mathematican). We are usually between 4 and 10 people marking an exam with anywhere between 50 and 600 participants.

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

#200

Post by winwang »

zdw wrote: 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.

(just doing roll call here with initals WW)
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