Interesting recent article on Robo-Grading (Automated Essay Scoring)

Submitted by Kiosa Coup on Sat, 07/21/2018 - 18:07
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Pearson (British-owned education publishing and assessment service) used AES to grade some 34 million student essays on state and national high-stakes tests in North America last year. How are students learning to game the algorithms? How are robo-graders leveling up with each iteration? What are some of the surprising ways that critics think robo-graders are not going to be able to level up?

More [US] States Opting to 'Robo-Grade' Student Essays By Computer. NPR June 2018.

 

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otacke

Mon, 07/23/2018 - 09:14

Hi Kiosa!

Thanks for the link. I had already heard about it in the podcast "Feierabendbier Open Education", and the results are really not that surprising IMHO. Well, you know how I personally think about that topic ("Pandora's Box", "Wii effect"), and I discouraged people to use something such as Essay for grading before ... It's not only a technical question of ("Can it be done?"), but also a societal question ("Do we want this?") -- for more openness add "under which circumstances" to the beginning of the questions. Again, those techniques are tools that can be used properly or improperly, and teachers are the ones with the knowledge and experience to choose the right tools for the task ahead.

Best,
Oliver