Computer grading of essays at the high school level

[BCEagle91]

<p>The program could have a grammar-checker component - similar to the
one that comes with Microsoft Word. The Microsoft Word checker (I
believe; I haven’t used it in a few years) tells you the problem and
may suggest alternatives.</p>

<p>Reading through a modern textbook on Artificial Intelligence would
probably leave you pretty unimpressed with what computers can do. The
problem is that you need to take a number of math and programming
courses before you can understand the AI book.</p>

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<p>Don’t you all know extremely bright students who would make a game
of it? Write a paper in total ignorance of the book and see if you
can get a 5, based on sentence structure, etc If the teacher didn’t
read the essays, it could work.</p>

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<p>I discussed this with my son after he took the Accuplacer test. This
was several years before he studied computer language theory and
artificial intelligence. Stuff that seemed like magic no longer was.</p>

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<p>Of course, students have been doing that to human graders forever. H
tells about one teacher he had. The guy actually graded the first
essay. Then every other grade was the grade the student got on the
first one. They would actually insert stuff in the middle of the
essay like, “Mr. __, I know you won’t read this and that I will get
a 92 on this paper” and they were right.</p>

<p>So, maybe the computer is an improvement over some writing teachers. </p>

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<p>The computer is just a tool.</p>