1. Objective:

        To promote fairness of grading in blended learning, the purpose of this study is to identify factors affecting grading fairness based on teachers' and students' perceptions.

2. Research questions:

Q1: From teachers' Perspective, what factors affect grading fairness in blended learning?

Q2: From students' Perspective, what factors affect grading fairness in blended learning?

3. Theoretical framework

Blended Learning and Grading

        Blended learning is a combination of traditional face-to-face and online learning (Tayebinik & Puteh,2013), which aims to create a community of inquiry that can fully engage students in collaboratively constructing meaningful knowledge (Garrison, 2009). Nowadays, increasing numbers of higher educational institutions have adopted blended learning to transform teaching and facilitate the learning process (Alammary et al., 2014). However, blended learning itself does not automatically result in effective learning. Assessment plays a crucial role in it, which can frame learning, create learning activity, and orients all aspects of learning behavior (Gibbs, 2006). Students are influenced by the way they perceive the assessment in learning (Gibbs, 2010).

        Among assessment methods that aim to evaluate academic performance (Chassignol et al., 2018), grading is a powerful tool to identify valuable learning and test it (Walvoord et al., 2011). The definition of grading in this article includes grading practice and grades (Horan et al., 2010) Assessment through grading is easy for students to understand. It makes students aware of how good their performances are. While grades may lead to pressure and anxiety, they help students be more responsible and better learners (Evan, 2021). Blended learning challenges the current situation by combining online and traditional learning together (Moskal et al., 2013), leading to the complexity of grading. Different learning modes demand more grading, like paper-pencil tests, performance-based assessments, teacher-self developed assessments (Moss, 2013), etc. However, much previous research focused on course design to improve the effectiveness of blended learning instead of promoting grading.

Fairness and Grading

        Fairness is fundamental in education, and students' perceived fairness can affect cognitive, emotional, and behavioral learning outcomes. Students' perceptions of distributive fairness can affect students' motivation and affective learning concerning the course, teacher-student relationship, and it is also associated with academic performance and student commitment (Chory, 2002). It also positively affects student's sense of belonging and trust in people and formal institutions (Resh, 2014). A sense of justice may increase the student's satisfaction, efficacy, and commitment to others (Wendorf et al., 2005). Students who perceive that they are under-rewarded are likely to seek equity by reducing their inputs (Greenberg, 1990) and psychological engagement in university (Berti et al., 2010).

        Assigning grades to students is a complex issue for teachers because they have to use a single academic mark to contain multiple information about students (Allen, 2005), especially in blended learning. Students care about grading fairness more than other issues like validity (Sambell et al., 1997); they are less satisfied with grading when they perceived it as unfair (Nesbit et al., 2006). Although many teachers endeavor to grade their students objectively, many students still feel unjust (Alm et al., 2015). Factors affecting grading fairness can be categorized into student factors, teacher factors, and environmental factors. Student factors: students behavior (Murillo & Hidalgo, 2017), gender ( Scott et al., 2014), students' learning styles (Lantolf & Poehner, 2013), peer assessment (Rasooli et al., 2018); Teachers factors: teachers' competency (Gipps, 1995), teachers' compassion for students (Alm & Colnerud, 2015), data selected for grading ( Scott et al., 2014); Environmental factors: proper facilities (Gipps, 1995), access to test content (Tierney, 2013, 2016), multiple assessment opportunities (Mauldin, 2009), grading criteria (Suskie, 2000) classroom environment (Tierney, 2016) 

Procedure and instrument This study adopted a qualitative method to investigate the fairness of grading in blended learning. We invited six Chinese university students who had blended learning experiences and six Chinese teachers who had blended teaching experiences to participate in this study (see table 1 and table 2). We anonymized all participants' names and replaced them with aliases. We used semi-structured interviews to collect data. Brief outlines were formulated to guide the in-depth interview of students and teachers. The protocol for teachers' interviews included questions to identify teachers' background, blended teaching experience, grading method, and their perception of grading fairness in blended learning. The outline for students' interviews included questions to identify students' background, blended learning experience, and perception of grading fairness in blended learning. Three researchers conducted semi-structured interviews in quiet environments online due to the current situation of COVID-19. We adopted individual interviews because they can avoid mutual interference. Every interview lasted 40-60 minutes, and two researchers were present in 12 interviews with every participant. All interviews were audio-recorded after getting participants' permission. Data analysis Two researchers transcripted these radio recordings together, and the other one did corrective listening to ensure its accuracy. The data were analyzed using content analysis. First, one piece of students' interviewed-text and one piece of teachers' interviewed-text were randomly selected and analyzed by two researchers to identify themes individually and then discussed until the intercoder reliability was over 0.7(ICR=0.61 to ICR=0.83). After developing the coding frame (see Table 3), the third author of this paper did a validity check for these themes of the coding frame. After that, two researchers analyzed all quotations about a specific theme comparing with one another. If new subthemes were identified, the interview transcripts mentioned before would be recoded to identify the new themes. At the end of the analysis process, the third researcher examined the data to ensure no information was omitted and themes could be traced back to the original data.

Figuring out factors that influence grading fairness in blended learning is vital for effective teaching. Our findings suggested that the ease of use and flexibility of LMS is significant in grading fairness in blended learning, which is different from grading in a traditional course. Furthermore, both teachers and students agreed that transparency and explicitness of the criteria play a vital role in ensuring equality in grading in blended courses. Students and teachers in our study also highlighted the importance of a variety of sources selected for grading. Moreover, teachers and students emphasized that when carrying out grading assessments, the needs and characteristics of each student should be taken into consideration. In this study, teachers are not aware of students' peer assessment, teachers' approach to grading, and teacher-student relationship will affect students' perceived fairness; however, these factors are repeatedly mentioned in students' responses. This study contributes to further validation of fairness theory in blended learning contexts. Although grading is an essential component of blended learning, little empirical research has focused on it, and the grading equity component has been neglected. The current study demonstrated that researchers should consider multiple factors of grading fairness in the blended learning setting. This article's insights will help teachers teaching blended courses grade more fairly and let universities pay more attention to grading fairness in blended learning.

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