Just moderated an interesting open & friendly discussion on pro’s and cons of anonymous grading. #LongThread @RUReflects @Radboud_Uni
First, why do it? Pro#1: people, even academics, even philosophers, even ethicists - indeed probably those in particular – are prone to bias scholar.google.nl/scholar?q=anon…
& insidehighered.com/news/2016/01/0… & esp comments here: feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/2012/02/27/ano… @FeministPhils & feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/2015/04/05/ano…
& insidehighered.com/news/2016/01/0… & esp comments here: feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/2012/02/27/ano… @FeministPhils & feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/2015/04/05/ano…
Bias against who? E.g. students who are not like you, too much like you, not good at grammar, not native speakers, dyslectic, shy, introvert, female, not white, too poetic, not poetic enough, etcetera, etcetera.
Pro#2 *we* use double blind peer review, so least we can do is use the same standards to evaluate student work. For fairness's sake & teaching them what academia is like. (Possible response: it's not like the peer review system is all that great/leads to non-based evaluation.)
Pro #3: Lady Justice⚖️is blind; blind grading is fair grading. Possible respons: in the ideal world, yes. In the real world, we need to precisely to attend to vulnerabilities, differences, diversity. Cf. this great paper by Laura Valentini, esp non-ideal theory ii & iii
Possible response to response #3: doing non-ideal theory as a teacher, i.e. incorporating (personal) facts about students, is maybe the student advisor's job. If student has right to exceptions, that has to be taken care of differently/procedurally/etc., not during grading phase.
See also "Double anonymous review helps women" feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/2016/09/03/dou… @FeministPhils
Anonymous grading Downside#1: "undermines teacher's integrity. An activity that was part of the teacher's professional role, is now taken away." Possible response same as above: is it teacher's job to factor in "personal" aspects & compensate grade?
Reply #2 to Downside#1: many (many) other areas in which to be virtuous & exercise integrity. Big misconception about AG is for instance that you need to *never find out* which student ends up getting which grade. Of course you can, and then can talk with them about it after.
Downside #2: "leads to impersonal relation with student; treating him/her as a number." Possible reply: can happen, need not happen - up to teacher (teacher's integrity, in fact). Again, you can give specific feedback & have a personal discussion post-exam or post-paper.
Another important response to both integrity and impersonal worries: you don't need to grade *everything* anonymously: you can do it in some (larger) courses, and even within 1 course, you can choose to do it only for e.g. 50% of examination.
(Also, one might say that making an effort to evaluate fairly *is* what it means to treat someone as a person.)
Downside #3: anonymous grading = blind grading = not having knowledge of student's special circumstances/challenges/etc. (a standpoint epistemology-point). Reply: cf. "Possible response to response #3" on non-ideal theory + *who* needs to incorporate these facts and *when*.
Downside #4: Anonymity can lead to harshness (lessen learned from double blind peer review). Possible response: probably worse in publishing contexts than (hierarchical) teacher-student contexts (??). But this needs to be closely monitored. Cf. comments dailynous.com/2015/12/15/is-…
Downside #4: "learning this, esp. the digital environment, takes time. I'm overworked as it is!". Yes, legitimate point. For Brightspace/ Radboud folks there's this video: Takes 2.5 minutes, shorter than this thread. + See also constructive#2.
Ok, so on the constructive side, what was mentioned: if you're hesitant/sceptical about AG, try it out. Try it in 1 course, or do half of the grading of one course anonymously. See what the effect is & how you feel about it. You're a scientist, do the evidence-based bit :-)
Constructive #2: have an informal, low threshold yearly (!) tutorial where someone walks through the steps of your uni's specific digital environment, beamed on a wall, so that you don't get the theory in an e-mail but the actual practice & actually know where to navigate/click.
Constructive #3: your hesitation wrt anonymous grading can itself be something to be discussed with your students, esp. if you worry mostly about integrity & impersonal relation. This is what I like to do & my experience is it goes a long way to meet both concerns.
Conclusion of our meeting: anonymous grading maybe isn't to be celebrated in itself - it's not w/o costs. Ideally we'd have much smaller classrooms & less grading. And simply more funding. But given the amount of teaching & students & existence of bias, it's the best we've got.
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