An analysis of more than 30 million grading records from University of Michigan finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades. This is due to sequential grading biases and the default order of students’ submissions in Canvas—the most widely used online learning management system—which is based on the alphabetical rank of their surnames.
… What’s more, they find, those alphabetically disadvantaged students receive comments that are notably more negative and less polite, and exhibit lower grading quality measured by post-grade complaints from students.
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Pei says the idea for the study came up during a discussion he had with Wang in which they were talking about their research: She studies educational technology and he studies artificial intelligence. He observed that a fundamental task of machine learning is data labeling, also a sequential task that can be long and tedious—but one that is randomized.
It got them thinking about educational systems like Canvas and led to some pilot studies to see if there was any disparity among grades based on the amount of time spent in the task of grading.
“We kind of suspect that fatigue is one of the major factors that is driving this effect, because when you’re working on something for a long period of time, you get tired and then you start to lose your attention and your cognitive abilities are dropping,” Pei said.
The researchers note the option exists to grade the assignments in a random order, and some educators do, but alphabetical order is the default mode in Canvas and other online learning management systems. One simple fix would be to make random order the default setting.