No professor wistfully lists grading papers as the reason they went into education, or as one of the job’s most rewarding components. The task, crucial to tracking the progress of students, tends to feel like more of slog to get through than a valuable use of time.
Enter Discern. Developed by the non-profit edX, the automated grading software was built to review and provide feedback on essays.
The tool doesn’t work in a vacuum. It requires human professors or graders to score 100 essays or essay questions. The data compiled from this initial sample set will inform the rest of the grading the software performs.
The Benefits of Automated Essay Grading
Discern is available free online, and touts the ability to provide students instant feedback as one of its main benefits. Instead of having to wait the several days or weeks it takes human graders to provide suggestions on their writing, students can get some idea of ways to improve, and make updates or re-write their work that same day.
Professors who choose to make use of the software can apply less time to reviewing and grading student papers, and more to the arguably more valuable portions of their jobs like planning their courses and working with students directly.
The Downsides and Controversy
Automated grading of multiple-choice assignments seems easy enough, but how can a machine, even one that incorporates artificial intelligence, purport to provide thoughtful feedback and scoring of something as unique and subjective as a student essay?
That’s the question behind many criticisms of the tool. Technology may be able to tackle some basic aspects of writing like grammatical structure, but it can’t reasonably analyze the ideas in the writing.
Concerned that use of the software will harm the learning experience of students, a number of educators have signed and circulated a petition against automated assessment software.
Somewhere between the benefits and skepticism lies the question of how well human graders are able to serve students. In some cases, the answer is certainly “very well,” but not in all. With many classes in higher education serving hundreds of students, the image of a professor or TA exhaustingly making his or her way through hundreds of essays for grading is no fiction. How well can someone in this scenario provide thoughtful analysis and feedback to students on their writing?
Software isn’t likely to fill the role of the professor any time soon in providing students useful suggestions for improvement and growth. Nonetheless, there may still be a role for a tool like Discern in helping students improve the more technical aspects of writing, taking some of that pressure off our already overburdened professors.
We can’t predict how well artificial intelligence will develop in the coming years, but for now, students are best served by a human analysis of their ideas and arguments to gain the insights needed to improve.