Keeping up with the Joneses? When it comes to getting better grades, it’s good to be the Andersons | University of Michigan News

Knowing your ABCs is essential to academic success, but having a last name starting with A, B or C might also help make the grade.

An analysis by University of Michigan researchers of more than 30 million grading records from U-M finds students with alphabetically lower-ranked names receive lower grades. This is due to sequential grading biases and the default order of students’ submissions in Canvas—the most widely used online learning management system—which is based on alphabetical rank of their surnames.

What’s more, they find, those alphabetically disadvantaged students receive comments that are notably more negative and less polite, and exhibit lower grading quality measured by post-grade complaints from students.

“We spend a lot of time thinking about how to make the grading fair and accurate but even for me it was really surprising,” said Jun Li, associate professor of technology and operations at U-M’s Ross School of Business who co-authored the study with doctoral students Jiaxin Pei from U-M’s School of Information and Helen (Zhihan) Wang from Ross.

The researchers collected available historical data of all programs, students and assignments on Canvas from the fall 2014 semester to the summer 2022 semester. They supplemented the Canvas data with university registrar data, which contains detailed information about students’ backgrounds, demographics and learning trajectories at the university.

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