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May 10, 2005
Computers grading student essays
I know there will a radical element out there that will be horrified by the concept, but personally I think it's a great idea. Actually I like the notion of being able to access the system and running a sample essay through the system as preparation. As I've discussed earlier today, that I used to just write essays and turn them the same day. I could have saved so much time if I could have run them through a grader program to start with, then I might have a better idea beyond passing the spell checker of what I needed to do with the essay. Because honestly I've written perfectly good papers but having no clue what one hair brained professor to the next was looking for it was always a crap shoot on the first couple of papers to see if you could guess what they wanted it. I know it took me forever to find an English teacher that actually could stand my philosophies so I could pass my upper level English requirement. It had nothing to do with my writing ability, it had to do with the fact that each one required a certain point of view on the written material that was being a non-English major I wasn't aware of or concerned about. I remember I wrote a 10 page paper one morning on some crappy piece of literature that was considered part of the cannon. And I literally woke up on the wrong side the bed that morning, and I ripped it to shreds about how incoherent the writing was, the misuse of language, and the utter lack of a story. Evidently pointing out such things about literature in the cannon is a bit on the offensive side. Luckily at the time I knew an English major and she informed me to drop the class because I was going to fail and pointed me to a professor that would be "open" to my kind of thinking. And that was actually one of the best English classes I've ever had. We read the strangest books I've ever come in contact with in my entire life. I was still me and I challenged the notions of the books, but the professor did nothing but encourage my challenging. The only time I felt I didn't get a fair shake was a disagreement we had over a African writers book about conflict in a village. I pointed out that the religious overtones were obvious effort by the author to question to role of religion in his culture, the professor felt that I was projecting too much American culture into my reading of a foreign book. But other than that disagreement it was a wonderful class. My point to all this pointless rambling is that there is a great advantage to remove subjectivity of individual professors or teachers from grading as possible. And if technology makes that possible, then by all means let's use it. In the end I think it will yield better papers, better writers, and happier teachers.
Read more here.
Posted by ManDrake at May 10, 2005 7:12 PM