by Tomorrow’s Professor
Education technology has long since delivered on its promise of software that can grade most student work in lieu of instructors or teaching assistants. These days, debates about artificial intelligence in education are more likely to revolve around whether automatons can be relied upon to teach students new concepts. Yet when it comes to English composition, the question of whether computer programs can reliably assess student work remains sticky. Can a machine that cannot draw out meaning, and cares nothing for creativity or truth, really match the work of a human reader? In the quantitative sense: yes, according to a study released by researchers at the University of Akron. The study, funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, compared the software-generated ratings given to more than 22,000 short essays, written by students in junior high schools and high school sophomores, to the ratings given to the same essays by trained human readers.
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