Approaches to Marking
Alex Usher,
Higher Education Strategy Associates,
Apr 02, 2020
Earlier this week I had a drive-by Twitter disagreement with Bonnie Stewart about whether online marking exaggerated inequalities. I argued that it does not; she responded "all the prejudices remain with new inequities added." À propos (probably coincidentally) Alex Usher looks at "the issue of different methods of marking and assessment." Writing about higher education, Usher contrasts the "professorial classroom sovereignty" in North America with models where the responsibility for marking is split between several agents in order to produce (variably) cost-effectiveness or fairness. Usher comments, "it is worth thinking sometimes about the price-tag our doctrine of 'professorial classroom sovereignty' carries: specifically, in reduced ability to seek gains from specialization, concerns about fairness in grading, and quality control." And I think this casts nicely into my own perspective that individual in-person classroom teachers are a lot less fair than we would like to pretend, and that online learning can redress this in ways the traditional system cannot.
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