In this two-part Spotlight on LOUISA post, Data and Equality Officer, Katie Grieve, explores how learning technology decisions can impact attainment gaps. This preliminary exploration provides fresh insights into the intricate relationship between learning technology choices, anonymity, and attainment gaps, laying the groundwork for more nuanced understandings of educational equity.

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Introduction and context

Universities in the UK have been aware of the prevalence of attainment gaps between various demographic groups since the 1990s, with differences in degree attainment first noted between ethnicity groupings (Connor et al. , 1996). Since then, they have become a focus for research, policy, and institutional strategies. The University of Edinburgh has persistent attainment gaps across ethnicity, gender, disability, and age. Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic students, male students, disabled students, and students with age on entry 17 or under and aged 21 or over have been awarded lower degree classifications historically.

A lack of anonymity in assessment was posited as a contributing factor to these attainment gaps, with systemic bias and prejudice potentially causing markers to award marginalised students lower marks. This suspicion led to 2008 campaign by the National Union for Students: ‘Mark my words, not my name’. At this time, students and student unions were concerned bias and discrimination had an impact on the way their work was assessed, leading to research connecting anonymity with the long-established attainment gap challenge in Higher Education (National Union for Students, 2008). Following this campaign, many UK universities adopted regulations which required anonymity where possible.

Yet attainment gaps persist across the sector, despite the anonymity requirement. Research has since contested the claim that non-anonymous marking leads to bias, potentially offering understanding behind the prevalence of the gap, despite the adoption of anonymity (Pitt and Winstone, 2018; Whitelegg, 2015). Additionally, in recent years the attainment gap has shown male students, not female, obtain lower marks. National Union for Students description of systemic prejudice in non-anonymous marking described this primarily impacting female students, but this is not necessarily the case currently.

However, there is a large gap in the research connecting anonymity and attainment gaps: learning technology has not yet factored into these discussions. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, learning is conducted increasingly online, and most universities in the UK require assessment to be uploaded and feedback released through a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). This environment offers many new avenues of discussion in the equality and diversity sector, with considerations surrounding web accessibility, digital capability, and now Artificial Intelligence (AI) entering conversations.

One specific aspect of this learning technology that relates to assessment and feedback is the use of dropboxes. Students submit their work in the VLE through dropboxes, to be marked anonymously by course tutors. At least, this has always been the assumption. Research done as part of the University of Edinburgh’s LOUISA project (Learn Optimised for In-course Assessment and Feedback) found that many Schools and Deaneries at Edinburgh have a different approach, with some using one dropbox, and others using two (one for on-time submissions, the other for late submissions or those with extensions). In instances where Schools use only one dropbox, it was found that submissions received after the deadline may be de-anonymised when on-time marks and feedback are released. Due to the large number of late submissions, extensions, and special circumstances seen at the institution, this inconsistency may impact a large number of students, affect previous assumptions on the anonymity of marking, and thus its relation to the attainment gap.

This preliminary study explores the relationship between these learning technology decisions, attainment gaps, and anonymity through a case study at the University of Edinburgh.

Research question

Past understandings of the impact of anonymity on the attainment gap in the higher education context have not considered the potential variation caused by School-level learning technology decisions. The main objective of this study was to understand the role dropbox usage may have on the relationship between attainment gaps and anonymity, and contribute to the debate through a new, learning technology lens. With the understanding that one dropbox makes it difficult to ensure anonymity in assessment, the main research question answered in this review is:

“Does the number of dropboxes decided on at a School-level have a relationship with the attainment gap?”

Part 2 of this blog post will explore how this question was investigated, what the data revealed, and why these findings matter for institutional approaches to educational equity.

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Katie Grieve

Katie is the Data and Equality Officer for the Information Services Group. A Mathematics graduate from the University of Edinburgh, she used data science techniques to interpret demographic and service user data, to better understand the experiences of diverse groups of staff and students. In October, she began a PhD in Data Visualisation.

Jan 19, 2026