The research is described in a 2024 draft paper posted on the website of SSRN, formerly known as the Social Science Research Network. We are currently working on revisions in collaboration with the academic journal Management Science.
Researchers detected a grading bias toward the end of the alphabet in a wide range of subjects. However, the scoring penalty was more pronounced in social sciences and humanities compared to engineering, science, and medicine.
In addition to students with lower grades, the researchers also found that students lower down the alphabet received more negative and disrespectful comments. For example, “Why aren’t there answers to Q 2 and 3?” “You’re setting yourself up for failure” and “Don’t do that again.” Students were more likely to be evaluated as “(student name), please try harder on this draft!” thank you! “
Although the researchers cannot prove exactly why the extra points are deducted from Wilson athletes around the world, they believe that instructors (in this study, mainly graduate students from unknown universities) are under a heavy grading burden, especially after grading. I think it’s because he gets tired and moody. This is the 50th consecutive student. Even before the era of electronic grading, it’s very likely that teachers weren’t that fair to students at the bottom of the paper pile. However, in the paper world, a student’s position in the library was constantly changing depending on when the paper was turned in and how the teacher picked it up. No student will be at the bottom every time. In the LMS world, U, V, W, X, Y, Z is almost always the case.
Another theory the authors mentioned in their paper is that if they’re already giving out a series of A’s, instructors may feel they need to be tougher to avoid being too lenient with high scores. It means that it has a gender. Students at the bottom of the alphabet may be victims of well-intentioned efforts to curb grade inflation. It’s also possible that the instructor is too lenient with students at the top of the alphabet, but grades more accurately as students progress. In any case, students at the bottom are evaluated differently.
Some university faculty seem to be aware of their own human weaknesses. In 2018, a user posted on a Canvas message board asking the company to randomize the grades. “In my case, prejudice crept in along with fatigue,” the instructor writes. “I’ll grade a few, get out of there, grade a few more, and take a break. Or if I’m missing a deadline, that’s the goal.”
If you’ve read this far, you’re probably wondering how the researchers knew that students’ grades from U to Z were unfair. Perhaps they are relatively poor students? But when researchers matched Canvas grades to student records in the registrar’s office, they controlled for many student characteristics, from high school grades and college GPA to race, ethnicity, gender, family background, and income. I was able to. Last names at the end of the alphabet consistently received lower ratings, even among similar students graded by the same instructor.
The researchers also found that a small number of instructors were tinkering with the default settings, grading in reverse alphabetical order from Z to A. This produced exactly the opposite result. Students with names ending in the alphabet had higher grades, but those with A, B, and C last names had lower grades.
The bias against last names at the end of the alphabet is probably not unique to students using Canvas LMS. Researchers say all four major LMS companies, which control 90% of the U.S. and Canadian market and serve more than 48 million students, grade submissions alphabetically. Even Coursera, another online learning platform, does this.
Wang’s solution is to shake things up and have the LMS present students’ grading work in a random order. In fact, Canvas added a randomization option for instructors in May 2024 after seeing a draft of this University of Michigan study. “This was something we were aware of and had heard from some of our users, but it wasn’t finalized yet,” a company spokesperson said. “The University of Michigan report definitely pushed that research to the top of the list.”
However, the default remains alphabetical and instructors must go to settings to change it. (According to the study authors, changing this default “reduces visibility” into a site’s system settings.) We hope this story helps spread the word.
This article about learning management systems was written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.
