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."'"
When a judge is made of silicon (Score:4, Interesting)
Without computers we wouldn't be advancing in science, astronomy, genetics, or mathematics as rapidly as we have been in recent years. They are wonderful things. Hell, computers even help me keep a roof over my head. But I don't want Hal judging my kid's school papers.
New York Times articles (Score:5, Interesting)
Whoa wait up (Score:4, Interesting)
Teachers make mistakes and occasionally mark something negatively that was misread or misunderstood. In those cases the student can talk to the teacher and make a case.
If a computer does the marking though what do they do?
Tom
What's next? (Score:5, Interesting)
Using a bayesian spam classifier for this? (Score:5, Interesting)
This thing compares the essays it is supposed to grade with already graded papers in its database. Couldn't this be done with something like POPFile [sourceforge.net]? It isn't only a spam/ham classifier and lets you create as many "buckets" as you want (e.g. work, family, spam, mailing lists and system monitoring).
You could, in theory, create only buckets named (A...F), feed a large number of essays to it, make it "learn" how the essays are classified using statistics, and let it grade essays for you after that.
Is it possible to find masses of graded essays online? This would be a fun thing to try :).
Scary: (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually this sounds a lot like Gramatica. Gramatica was the grammer checker that was an optional component with WordPerfect for DOS and later a standard component with the Windows version. It was written by a team comprised of both computer scientists and professors of English. One of the interesting features was the scoring feature which would give you a rough estimate of the grade level of your writing. It would also give you statistics and compare them to a selection of famous works.
Isn't this why we write software? (Score:2, Interesting)
There will generally be two papers in each class that are remotely readable. The rest will be a LOT OF WORK to grade. If a bot could do some of the work, it would be welcome.
Late at night your eyeballs feel like they're on fire and you are convinced that the entire system should be put out of its misery. The thought that a student actually has an IDEA seems fantastic.
PLEASE don't be a troll and tell me that YOUR teacher never appreciated your ideas.
Re:When a judge is made of silicon (Score:5, Interesting)
Useless.. (Score:3, Interesting)
At my university, Duke, our new curriculum has specially designated writing classes. Every student needs to take three over their four years. A biology lab can be a writing class. So can an English class, history, religion, etc. All W classes have certain requirements--their must be certain amount of writing and more importantly REVISION.
I was fortunate enough to take a class from the author and profesor Reynolds Price. We had a final essay for the class. Along with my grade (not an A
A computer will NEVER be able to do this. Nor will a computer (at least in the foreseeable future) be able to comment on my theories about Milton's Paradise Lost.
As a student... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Go to a better school. (Score:2, Interesting)
In what manner HanzoSan, do you think SAT tests are flawed? I have never met anyone who scored a 1400+ who was greatly unobservant, had stagnant repetitive thought, or was largely an intellectual boor; however I can recall many people who scored much lower who were so.
{note to self...I should pay attention to avoid being too credulous of an anecdotal supposition when I am prescient of it's certain criticism, oh well}
Sausage (Score:3, Interesting)
Utter Bullshit (Score:2, Interesting)
Humans have been putting too much responsibility in the hands of computers. But to make teaching, and especially writing for god sakes, an objective process shows nothing but our society's indifference for educating and improving ourselves.
For those who see objectivity as something positive because it levels the playing field, then they never had a teacher that would take a chance and go past their duty to help a student. This is something no program will ever be able to do.
Computers are objective, people are not. That is what makes us different and inherently better.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)