Attractive female students' grades dropped during remote learning: Study

[marshwiggle]

This is actually a well studied phenomenon in many arenas. Why would it be a surprise in academia?
I think we especially don't like it when someone suggests we may not be 100% pure of thought. Oh gosh, we
might have a bias and one we aren't even aware of! Not us! Can't be!

The strangest thing to me, based on discussions like these, is that it seems that it's people from the most quantitative fields, (i.e. those with the most emphasis on completely objective questions, such as can be tested with multiple choice),who are the most willing to accept that bias exists and want to try to minimize it, while it's people from the most qualitative fields, where grading is virtually always subjective, who are most offended at the notion that they are subject to unconscious bias.

[Ruralguy]

Because if you do it right, degree of bias can be measured. But people are very resistant to break from experience, and insist that if they don't show any bias, then how would you ever be able to measure that they do? Must be bs, right? No.  A study such as this does not prove that you could automatically conclude that everyone shows this bias in grading. It simply shows that there will be a tendency to have this bias, subconciously. Maybe any one person picked would display this bias, but maybe not, but on the whole, if you check a group, then most would.  I don't automatically accept that this study is a good one. I am just saying that if it is, then the result is a s good as any other decently concluded behavioral result.

[marshwiggle]

Because if you do it right, degree of bias can be measured. But people are very resistant to break from experience, and insist that if they don't show any bias, then how would you ever be able to measure that they do? Must be bs, right? No.  A study such as this does not prove that you could automatically conclude that everyone shows this bias in grading. It simply shows that there will be a tendency to have this bias, subconciously. Maybe any one person picked would display this bias, but maybe not, but on the whole, if you check a group, then most would.  I don't automatically accept that this study is a good one. I am just saying that if it is, then the result is a s good as any other decently concluded behavioral result.

One of the things I like about the study is that it used the natural experiment of COVID. I like those attempts to make lemonade out of lemons that no ethics board would ever allow you to squeeze.

Also, in the study I recall about male and female names on CVs, there were actually two CVs; one "ordinary" candidate, and one "walks-on-water" candidate. The sex of the candidate mattered for the ordinary candidate, but not for the walks-on-water candidate.
This isn't surprising, and applies to this study as well; bias is going to make more of a difference in borderline cases. At the extremes, really good and really bad are pretty unambiguous.

The philosophical question is how much difference does it make in the long term if Student A winds up barely passing while Student B barely fails when a careful, objective analysis determines that they're essentially the same. Is Student A going to get far ahead?

[Caracal]

This is actually a well studied phenomenon in many arenas. Why would it be a surprise in academia?
I think we especially don't like it when someone suggests we may not be 100% pure of thought. Oh gosh, we
might have a bias and one we aren't even aware of! Not us! Can't be!

The strangest thing to me, based on discussions like these, is that it seems that it's people from the most quantitative fields, (i.e. those with the most emphasis on completely objective questions, such as can be tested with multiple choice),who are the most willing to accept that bias exists and want to try to minimize it, while it's people from the most qualitative fields, where grading is virtually always subjective, who are most offended at the notion that they are subject to unconscious bias.

I'm certainly not offended by the idea that I'm subject to all kinds of unconscious bias. I'm not a computer. I usually get more worried that I'm going easier on students who I like, or who say smart things in class, or students who I think might complain if they don't get a good grade. Anonymized grading could help with some of this, at least with in class exams. However, it isn't going to help at all with research papers where I know what the students are writing on. To be honest, I don't do anonymous grading because it would be time consuming. I have students hand write exams in class, but I enter in the grades and comments on the CMS. It wouldn't be that hard to do this while making the grades anonymous, but it would add a little bit of time for every exam and when you are grading 90 exams, that adds up. Grading already sucks up a huge amount of time so I'm not really inclined to do things that will make it worse. If my school wanted to start giving me TAs who could do some of that work, that would be different...