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Comment by jimmar | Hacker News Reader

Order effects are real. I'm a prof. I notice that the longer I grade, the less motivated I am to take off points and then justify why I took off those points. It's easier just to give points and move on. (And if anybody wants to criticize this, I'll be happy to launch into a diatribe on the psychometric dumpster fire that most assignments and their associated grading scales really are.)

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Also prof: me too. I'm much more likely to provide comments on the first couple of exams I grade than on the later ones.

I've found that gradescope is helpful in this regard, because it at least forces every point assignment to be matched to a rubric item. I don't have data, but I believe it makes our grading a lot more uniform compared to the pre-gradescope days. (This might be easier in grading computer science exams than in more subjective areas, though.)

This is the opppsite of the effect they found. I do wonder if there is a big difference depending on grader and the study found some kind of average.

The article mentions that the paper is under review, but I'm guessing the effect size is small and that individual differences between graders is very substantial. The article states:

> The researchers collected available historical data of all programs, students and assignments on Canvas from the fall 2014 semester to the summer 2022 semester.

Thousands of students X 8 years X lots of assignments per year and you get a sample size so big that it would be hard not to find statistically significant effects.

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