Augustana should address grading bias
Grading bias is the over- or under-grading of academic work due to factors unrelated to the academic merit of the work.
Such factors may include graders’ prior experience with students and their impression thereof or, according to a University of Southern California study, any number of physical characteristics, such as “race, sex or level of attractiveness.”
Grading bias can result from either explicit or implicit bias. According to a U.S. Department of Justice guide, explicit bias occurs within conscious awareness — like overt racism or sexism, for instance.
Implicit bias occurs outside of conscious awareness and includes an individual’s “subconscious feelings, perceptions, attitudes and stereotypes developed as the result of prior influence and imprints.”
Moreover, implicit biases can actually conflict with an individual’s consciously held values and beliefs. But whether resulting from explicit or implicit bias, grading bias is detrimental.
Biased evaluations of student work that lead to reduced grades are harmful in several ways.
For starters, a Harvard study says “downwardly biased grading can lead to actual reductions in student learning through self-fulfilling prophecies or teacher expectancy effects.”
These effects can have far-reaching implications, as future teachers may “base their expectations in part on the biased evaluations of previous teachers.”
Studies have shown that “when students detect bias from their teachers, they are unlikely to develop trusting relationships with those teachers and may disengage from the class, or — over time — school more generally.”
Biased evaluations of student work that lead to inflated grades are also harmful because upwardly biased grading rewards a student’s academic work for the wrong reasons.
An article from researchers at the University of England, Australia notes that upwardly biased grading may occur because the instructor has a positive personal impression of the student or because the student is in one of the instructor’s preferred social groups. Although a student may feel unbothered by an upwardly biased grade, receiving a grade that does not truly reflect the quality of the work submitted does not do the student any favors.
There are several ways Augustana can address grading bias. The first thing is to simply acknowledge grading bias and the responsibility we have as students, professors and administrators to address this issue. Once we do this, there are a number of policies that the university can adopt and a number of low-cost tools the university can use to mitigate the effects of grading bias at Augustana.
In particular, I support the adoption of two university-wide grading policies.
The first policy would require instructors to use rubrics to evaluate academic work with a subject element, such as essays and presentations, and would require instructors to provide a copy of the graded rubric to the students.
Rubrics make clear to the student what the instructor’s expectations for a particular assignment are and what criteria the instructor will use to evaluate the student’s work. In addition, by providing instructors with clear evaluative criteria, rubrics leave less room for an instructor’s biases to “fill in the blanks.”
The second policy would require instructors to use anonymous grading. Anonymous grading limits the amount of non-relevant information provided to an instructor during the grading process by keeping the students’ names hidden from the instructor.
Not only are rubrics and anonymous grading research-backed tools for mitigating grading bias, but they are also easy to implement and don’t carry any additional financial costs.
Although there is an initial time cost to producing rubrics, once rubrics are made, they will only require minor adjustments. Moreover, many professors at Augustana already implement rubrics to some degree, so they could help those professors who do not use rubrics in order to expedite the process.
Anonymous grading, on the other hand, does not carry any additional time or financial costs. Canvas already has a built-in anonymous grading tool that simply requires instructors to opt-in. This tool removes students’ names from their submissions and keeps the students’ identities anonymous until the instructor posts the grade.
I certainly do not intend to point the finger at instructors. Augustana professors take seriously the values of equality and fairness in academics. But this is not enough to address grading bias, especially grading bias that results from implicit bias.
Because our university takes values such as fairness, diversity and inclusion seriously, it has a responsibility to adopt policies that address grading bias, as grading bias directly conflicts with these values. There are several policies and tools that can be adopted that do not carry any financial burdens, are supported by research and can be easily implemented into Augustana’s grading practices.
