They call the result the Intelligent Essay Assessor. And while every announcement of a new grading technology prompts another round of alarm among those who worry that computers will start putting professors out of work, faculty members who have used the technologies say such fears are exaggerated. In fact, the same technologies that underlie automated grading are also making increasingly sophisticated automated tutors possible.
Many academics remain skeptical of grading technologies.
Nobody knows how to write a program smart enough to actually do what even the most mediocre teacher does when he reads and grades a paper. But the creators of the essay assessor, which is among the most sophisticated grading programs, say there are clear advantages to having a computer grade essays. In a large lecture class, for example, a professor and several teaching assistants might have to split up a stack of essays and spend hours grading them by hand. Not only would each grader have a different grading style, but he or she might grade each paper on a slightly different basis. The computerized essay assessor, say its creators, can grade each essay using exactly the same standards in a matter of seconds.