The following section contains some suggestions for increasing fairness in grading. We hope that these suggestions will serve as helpful starting points for further thoughts about your own case--not as authoritative rules. We also welcome further suggestions, concerns, or recent research on the topic of grading methods and underrepresentation in philosophy. Collaboration will enhance the usefulness of this section and of the website as a whole, so feel free to email us at [email protected]
Anonymizing Papers/Exams:
Why do it?
How to do it?
Worries:
Making Grading More Mechanical
Why do it?:
Other Resources/Further Discussion:
The following entries and accompanying comments sections on the groups blog NewAPPS provide more discussion of anonymous grading:
The Feminist Philosophers blog is also the location of some good discussions, including the following entry:
Thanks are due especially to Kate Manne for her help with forming the content of this document.
Anonymizing Papers/Exams:
Why do it?
- One reason to anonymize papers and exams is the fact that research suggests the existence of implicit biases. Implicit biases are biases against certain groups which may be present even in people who are unaware of them or who to some extent are even attempting to resist them. Research has indicated that implicit biases are present in the vast majority of the human population. It has also supported the concern that these biases are capable of causing minorities and women to be unfairly negatively assessed compared to white males.
- The paper, “Implicit Bias, Stereotype Threat, and Women in Philosophy,” by Jennifer Saul, summarizes some of the research on this issue. It is available for download on Professor Saul's department page. (See the lower part of the right-hand column.)
- There is also an Implicit Associations Test offered online by Harvard University, for those who are interested in assessing themselves for such biases.
- Anonymizing papers is also important because of the many non-implicit discomforts or warped ways of thinking that many of us are likely to have inherited, often in a deeply ingrained way, from society at large and, to some extent, from academic philosophy itself. In its typical present form, philosophy is a discipline which is unfortunately but obviously whitewashed. This point is well-made by Bharath Vallabha here. Realizing this fact about the current state of the discipline is essential for those teaching philosophy, if we are interested in leaving the discipline better than we found it. Efforts will require that philosophy teachers check themselves for prejudices and biases in more ways than simply making grading anonymous, but making grading anonymous can certainly help.
How to do it?
- There are many methods for making papers anonymous. One straight-forward method is for teachers to require that students attach a cover sheet to their paper, which can be folded back while grading. Students can also simply write their name on the back of their paper, submit work under a student number, or adopt temporary pseudonyms for each assignment. Whichever method you use, make sure you have a pre-established way of connecting papers back to the correct student after grading is completed.
Worries:
- I want to be available to help my students with their essays. Won’t this ruin the anonymizing process?
It seems to be clear that students gain a significant advantage from meeting with their teachers to discuss their essays in person. That being said, there are a few things to bear in mind related to this issue. These suggestions cannot be guaranteed to be available to and successful for everyone, but they hopefully provide a starting point:
1. Although the essay factor may mean that it will be impossible for you to enter the grading process completely anonymously, it need not completely ruin the anonymizing process. It may be that not every student will choose to consult with you beforehand, and it also may be the case that even upon meeting with every student, you do not have such specific information as to be certain of whose paper you are grading. That being said, you might consider encouraging students to discuss ideas with you or to bring outlines, instead of early drafts of papers, in order to more effectively maintain your anonymizing system.
2. A great deal of what goes into writing a good (especially undergraduate) paper is simply good writing (as opposed, that is, to magically genius philosophy). This means that if your school has a writing center to which you could direct your students, they are likely to be able to greatly improve their papers through that medium, even though the people at the writing center will likely not be familiar with the philosophical topics discussed in the papers. Learning about the resources like this that are available on your campus could be a great help to you. They could enable you to insist that students not show you drafts of their papers without isolating your students from more direct paper-writing assistance.
- I think it is important to track student progress over time. Won’t anonymous grading interfere with that?
Some teachers consider student progress to be an important factor in assessment. There are a few ways in which progress can still factor into assessment even if papers are graded anonymously:
1. After initial grades have been assigned, you could include a last step of grading in which you match the papers back to students and factor in student progress when finalizing the grade. In order to avoid negating the anonymous nature of the grading, you may want to set up a quantifiable way in which to do this: for example, by pre-deciding how many points students will gain if their grade has increased by some pre-set amount.
2. Progress can also be assessed outside of paper grades, as a further factor in the student’s overall grade instead.
Making Grading More Mechanical
Why do it?:
- As was noted above, teacher attitudes towards students can often be complicated in undesirable ways by the society in which classes operate. One plausible possibility for further addressing this issue is making grading more regimented and quantifiable: for example, by adding a numbered rubric. (Suggestions for some websites that make rubric-creation easier can be found through eLearning Industry here. If your university offers an online grading service, that service may also include a rubric-creator.) The specific category break-downs in rubrics help to focus assessment of papers on clearly defined aspects of the student’s performance.
- It is possible that such focus, aside from making graders more accountable to themselves about the exact breakdown of their assessment of papers and exams, may help graders avoid letting biases or prejudices sway their grading process. Although we have not found research expressly addressing the difference between rubric and more free-handed grading, is seems likely that impressionistic grading, simply because of the freedom it allows the grader in their thinking about the paper in question, would be more easily affected by biases and prejudices without the grader’s awareness.
Other Resources/Further Discussion:
The following entries and accompanying comments sections on the groups blog NewAPPS provide more discussion of anonymous grading:
- Carolyn Dicey Jennings, May 14, 2014
- Catarina Dutilh Novaes, May 2, 2013
The Feminist Philosophers blog is also the location of some good discussions, including the following entry:
- Anonymous Grading: Why and How, February 27, 2012
Thanks are due especially to Kate Manne for her help with forming the content of this document.