Essay Grading Software For Teachers 535
asjk writes "Software to help teachers with grading has been around for sometime. This is true even with respect to grading essays. A new tool, called Criteria, will look at grammar, usage, and even style and organization. It works by being trained by at least 450 essays scored by two professionals. The difference this time? Here is a snip from the article: '"There's a lot of skepticism," Dr. Spatola said. "The people opposed see it dehumanizing the student's papers, putting them through some sort of mechanical, computerized system like the multiple choice tests. That's really not the case, because we're not talking about eliminating the human element. We're making the process more efficient."'"
This seems like a bad idea (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Interesting.. (Score:5, Funny)
Computer vs Computer (Score:5, Funny)
Before we unleash such abominations (Score:3, Funny)
Grading software may not injure a human being's GPA or, through inaction, allow a human being's GPA to come to harm.
Grading software must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
Grading software must copy protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Gentleman, Start Your Compilers (Score:5, Funny)
What we need is software that grabs essays off the internet and runs them through the grading software and the cheating detection software, thus gauranteeing an 'A'.
Then we can truly achieve the goal of "knowledge passing from lecturer to paper without passing through any brains".
The only problem is that the machines might achieve intelligence. That must be avoided at all costs. To that end, all students and professors will be equipped with rifles or pistols to take out the machines if necessary. Potential students will be asked to specify weapons preference on their applications.
Re:Uh.... (Score:1, Funny)
Do what my history teacher does (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You asked for it! (Score:1, Funny)
I, too, am jaded by the stupid grammar and spelling police
the students will get a copy for themselves?
Re:Go to a better school. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Uh.... (Score:5, Funny)
Er, I'll save you moderators the trouble. -1, Flamebait. And a grammar flame to boot. With grammatical errors in it. I deserve modding down. I probably deserve worse. But I must speak.
If you do know English te word grammar checker should be used to write perfect technical papers. Its possible to write perfect technical papers, I do it all the time in college, its like standard here if you want an A.
This makes me want to weep. Did you intend it ironically?
"Its"? Twice?(!) A run-on sentence bragging about your prowess at grammar? Redundancy, incorrect capitalization, a typographical error, punctuation errors, and errors I don't know the name of?
Mind you, my grammar ain't perfect, even in this post. That last paragraph was nothing but sentence framents. I'm just saying I really, really hope you did that on purpose.
If not, shut the hell up about your perfect technical papers, 'kay?
Re:This seems like a bad idea (Score:5, Funny)
BASE SCORE: 100
-50: Essay too short (few arguments can be well-supported in nine words)
-50: Plagarism: It is 99.999% (MAX PROB) likely, based on the content of the essay, that it is plagarized from other sources.
-10: Grammar error: Phrase "I for one welcome" requires commas, as in "I, for one, welcome"*
-25: Missing key words: The essay grader was instructed to look for the following key words or phrases, which were not found in this essay: word: excellent, word: good, phrase: better then humans, word: lazy, phrase: java.lang.NullPointerException\nstacktrace\n\tat\
Total: 65501
Grade: A+
(*: Jumping out of character: To forstall objections, this "error" is deliberately pointed out as the kind of mistake a computer can make if you use grammar checkers and trust them blindly. While an excessively formal style of English might 'require' commas in that phrase, an excellent case can be made that in a nine-word sentence such commas just make the sentence choppy.)
Dehumanizing (Score:3, Funny)
Um...as opposed to English Comp classes in general?
I can see it now .. (Score:5, Funny)
Teacher: Johnny, I'm really sorry, but the computer crashed while your paper was being scored. I was looking over it. It's been a while since I've read a paper, but I was wondering what the following sentence means:
And this one:
Is that some kind of new language that kids are using? Oh, by the way, congratulations, you got a 100 on EVERY essay this semester! Good job!
A great leap forward (Score:3, Funny)
"What I did on my Summer Vaca'; DROP TABLE punctuation"
On our IM-trained youth of today ... (Score:2, Funny)
Input
Output
it's working (Score:1, Funny)
I believe that would be "from the sounds-better-THAN-my-12th-grade-teacher dept."
HanzoSan (Score:1, Funny)
Re:HanzoSan (Score:1, Funny)
haha.
Oh, man.
Anonymity's great.
Re:HanzoSan (Score:2, Funny)
Very funny rusty (Score:2, Funny)
Whoops! You got me! (Score:0, Funny)