And instead of taking several days to grade the paper, it yielded immediate feedback, says Karl Bean, another senior who took the class. Foltz and Darrell Laham, a UC psychology doctoral student, helped Landauer develop the approach. If the concept is the doctor operated on the patient and the student writes the surgeon wielded a scalpel, the program would find them semantically similar. The software grades consistently, whereas professors can grow weary or make mistakes, say its developers. It can serve as tutor and tester, they say.
Many educators oppose computerized assessment of writing, however.
Some doubt a computer can judge an argument s cogency or grasp linguistic nuances the same way people can. But, the developers argue, their software mimics human judgment. In a recent study now in press, Landauer found high levels of agreement on the way he, his teaching assistants and the computer graded 500 introductory psychology students essays. Landauer is so impressed with the software s reliability, he uses it to ensure that he and his teaching assistants grade students papers consistently. Dazzled as they are by Intelligent Essay Assessor s unswerving judgments, some educators and students worry that it hobbles creativity and overlooks writing quality.