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jeremie_strandtoday at 1:35 PM2 repliesview on HN

Anonymizing grading wherever posible seems like the obvious policy response here. The fact that many universities still haven't standardized blind grading for written work — even after decades of evidence on evaluator bias — says a lot about institutional inertia.


Replies

Aurornistoday at 3:32 PM

I don’t think it’s that simple. My assistant professor friends build relationships with students and help them work on topics and weaknesses. They get to know students and how to help them on problem areas.

For deeper courses they may help them pick topics to write about and sources to read.

Having that context for the ongoing feedback from grading and mentoring is valuable. Depending on the work it simply might not be possible to do anything blind.

Even without names, handwriting and writing styles are obvious. Even in an office setting I can always tell who wrote something as small as a sign or a note by handwriting or word choice alone.

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sh201today at 4:55 PM

This would only matter if the students were unfairly graded, which the paper didn't demonstrate.