In today’s age of Canvas and digital grading, grading anonymously could hardly be easier: all a teacher has to do is click the checkbox marked “Hide student names in the SpeedGrader” in the Canvas SpeedGrader options menu. But remarkably, many teachers choose instead to leave the door wide open to bias in their grading.
Anonymous grading, or blind grading, is a system that aims to reduce the influence of bias on students’ grades by “blinding” the teacher to the name of the student while the student’s work is being graded. It can help to mitigate the effects of racial and gender bias, as well as more personal biases based on the student’s participation, attendance record, previous work in the class, flattery of the teacher, or even physical attractiveness. Numerous studies have shown that these biases can affect teachers’ grading in all subjects, including those that are commonly seen as more “objective” (like math).
This separation of a student’s identity and their work is not only what fairness demands; it is also pedagogically important. When a student knows that their work has been graded anonymously, they are less likely to take feedback personally (especially negative feedback). As a result, the student will be more likely to use constructive comments to improve their future work, rather than automatically viewing a bad grade as mean or unfair.
Some teachers may worry that anonymous grading will prevent them from giving feedback on drafts or preliminary stages of an assignment, for fear of jeopardizing the anonymity of the work later on. This is rarely a problem when discussing ideas or preliminary drafts, which are unlikely to be defined enough to be identifiable in the final submission (particularly if the assignment is not due for several days or weeks). If feedback is necessary in the later stages of the assignment, or if teachers feel that individual discussions are too likely to identify a student’s final submission, comments can easily be given anonymously by having students submit drafts as a separate anonymous assignment. The teacher can then give feedback as they would for the actual assignment, but without attaching a grade.
Additionally, teachers considering anonymous grading may have concerns about assignment feedback being too generic and not “personalized” enough. However, in the cases in which it would be justified to give a student feedback that depends on their identity, rather than solely on their work, a teacher can still give this feedback while maintaining anonymous grading practices. The assignment can be graded and general feedback can be given anonymously, and, if they find it necessary, teachers can add “personalized” comments after the student’s name has been revealed—as long as the grade will not be changed based on the identity of the student.
Teachers should not be grading students—they should be grading students’ work. Anonymous grading can decrease the influence of bias and facilitate improvement, all without compromising feedback.