TRANSCRIPT: Remaining Mindful of Equity in Grading This video features two Durham Tech instructors and one Durham Tech student. In this transcript, each speaker is denoted by the following initials: JC = Jonathan Cook, Coordinator/Instructor, English JT = Janel Thompson, Chair, English and Communications/Instructor FK = Farrah Kearney, Durham Tech Student ---BEGIN TRANSCRIPT--- JC: It's hard to hear that, you know, unconscious biases can sometimes affect you or your students, especially when you're thinking about your students in the past and how they might have been affected by your unconscious biases. JT: I think what we mean by equitable grading practices is allowing the students to -- for their work to speak for itself, and to not necessarily be looking at the person and their life and trying to bring everything from outside in, but looking at the work and having a sort of standard for all of that work that we maintain for all of the students. JC: Moving forward, we have a real opportunity to make a change. [Onscreen text: Recognizing the Potential for Inequity in Grading] JC: I think grading unintentionally contributes to inequality because we all have unconscious biases. So we've all gone through training that has convinced us that those unconscious biases are real. They're based on things that we don't even think about most of the time. They come from our environment and our upbringing. And we can bring those into our grading practices, so we can, we'll have an image of a student in our head, or we'll think about our experiences with a student or we'll think about our experiences with people who are like that student. And sometimes, we make assumptions about the quality of the work or, you know, kind of what's gone into the work. And that can inadvertently harm students without even realizing it. JT: You want to be somewhat lenient on some people and you are not as lenient on other people. If you know a student is having a hard time, for instance, you may want to be gentler on that student where the work is not good, but you want to help, you know. That's not really a great thing for others. It's not equitable for the others. So if -- some unintentional things you can do is just ---- treat students differently. [Onscreen text: Student Benefits of Equitable Grading] FK: Knowing my instructor did not know whose work she was grading, it made me feel safe. What I mean by safe is I mean that it was like a judgment-free zone. JC: An equity-driven approach to grading helps in a couple of different ways. One, it obviously helps ensure that the students get the grade that they deserve, or at least much, much closer to the grade that they deserve. JT: I believe that an equity-driven approach to grading helps students because they can feel that there is no bias on their work, you know, negative or positive. They know that the work that they have given us is what we're looking at. And we're looking at it with the same standards that we are looking at everyone else's work. JC: But it also helps students feel more invested in the class, I think. Because it helps students recognize that this instructor cares, wants to be equitable. And if the students had experiences in the past, of being -- of experiencing bias or prejudice, especially in the classroom -- if we can assure them that we are trying to short circuit those biases or that we're invested in making sure that that doesn't get passed down from us to them in this class, then I think they're a lot more willing to trust us and to invest in the class. JT: I think that it helps students because they know their work is what is front and center and not anything that they have done or said. [Onscreen text: Providing Equitable Grading in Online Classes] JC: One of the easiest and most effective strategies that instructor can use to implement equitable grading in their class is blind grading. JT: Some of the things you can do are blind grading. That is something I've chosen to do more recently and I really have liked that practice. JC: Blind grading obviously takes the student's name off of the -- the item that you're grading, and then, so you don't bring those unconscious biases or even conscious biases to bear when you're grading the work that's in front of you. JT: What I do is I will hide the students' identities from myself and I will grade the question. So I will click the question, and I will grade it, just the question, everybody all at the same time where I'm just looking at the work in the rubric. And sometimes, I don't even start from the top. I just go, you know, go randomly around. So that's even more sort of blind. I have used it in my assignments as well. If you can get away from not seeing the name on the assignment, then it's really easy to just look at that work, grade the work for what it is, use the rubric and give the student the grade that they deserve. [Onscreen text: Intentionally Bring Student Awareness to Your Equitable Grading Practices] JT: When I told my students that I am doing the blind grading, my students' response to the blind grading tends to be positive. They are a little surprised that something like that exists. FK: I felt no pressure. That's what I was thinking, like, good. Like, it was like a phew! Like, I felt no pressure. I didn't feel the pressure of being like perfect on my, like, papers, you know, or like an assignment we had to do. Because, you know, I make mistakes, so knowing that was so, so good. JT: When they ask me to talk about their paper, I'll say, "I don't know which paper is yours. I have to go and take a look at it." And they're like, "How do you not know it's my paper?" "Well, because no one's name is on the papers when I grade it. I have no idea whose work I'm grading at the time." JC: It's really easy in that sense to get -- to feel like you're really centering the work rather than your experience with a student and what you expect their grade to be. FK: I strongly recommend that technique because I feel like, although we don't mean to, we all tend to be biased. We may not try to, but I feel like sometimes it's automatic. Even if you don't mean any harm, it's just you see the name, you're like, oh, you know this person right here -- oh, this person right here. You know, when it's blind grading, I feel like it's all, it's all fair.