Two assessors for the ordinary examination ought to result in stricter requirements for justifying appeals

Abstract

All students at Norwegian universities and colleges have the right to complain about ordinary grading decisions. When an appeal is made, two new examiners are appointed, at least one of whom should be external. The handling of appeals in the current system is to be blind, meaning that the examiners handling the complaint should not be aware of the original grade. It also means that they are not to receive information regarding the examiners’ reasoning for the original grade or the student’s reasoning for the complaint. In this article, we discuss whether the current appeal grading system with blind grading is appropriate when ordinary appeal grading is conducted by two examiners. We argue that the students' legal rights are not in conflict with the principle that good decision-making processes should be well-informed before decisions are made. We conclude that, in cases where two assessors are used for the ordinary examination, we ought to abolish the blind aspect in the current appeal grading system.