An automated essay grader is a computer program that is used to instantly grade essays and short answer responses for class instructors. Another purpose for automated essay scoring (AES) is to assess a student’s work by checking grammar, style, and structure while also producing feedback for the student to reflect on before submitting their essays. The main objective of an essay grader is to classify the facts and terms which are being used in the written essay. An AES is also used as a rating tool that gives numbered scores to writing tasks based on the instructor’s rubric or based on the data collected from all essays the program has graded. (Mark D Shermis., Cynthia Wilson Garvan, Yanbo Diao, University of Florida) The issue with using an
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A study from the journal, “Automated free text marking with Paperless School” by Oliver Mason states that in Britain on average, a teacher spends 40% of their time teaching compared to 30% of their time grading papers. (Mason, 2002) If this study is accurate then these teachers only have 30% of their time left for making lesson plans along with living their personal lives. Many instructors have reported staying up all night or waking up very early to take the time to grade essays. If this is the outcome of assigning essays, it is very understandable as to why teachers seem to only assign a few essays per course, thus resulting in inadequate essay practice for the students. In an article titled “How Long Does it Take to Grade an Essay”, a lower-level English professor named Tina Blue argues that the essays take so long to grade because “…our students manage to do so much wrong in every single paper that the task of marking their atrocious grammar and usage, correcting their factual inaccuracies, untangling their essays ' incoherent structure (at both the paragraph and the essay level), and sorting out and explaining their logical fallacies requires an effort equivalent to that which Hercules expended in mucking out the Augean stables.” (Blue, 2003) Is this completely the students fault though? The best way to get good at something and to really understand it is through practice and feedback. If a student only writes three or four essays in a 10 week class is that really enough practice? Along with the lack of practice, is the lingering stress of deadlines and the weight the essay carries on a student’s final grade. After the essay is turned in it often takes one to two weeks to receive the feedback from the instructor. By that time the students are already focused on new assignments and are more than likely not even be
A study from the journal, “Automated free text marking with Paperless School” by Oliver Mason states that in Britain on average, a teacher spends 40% of their time teaching compared to 30% of their time grading papers. (Mason, 2002) If this study is accurate then these teachers only have 30% of their time left for making lesson plans along with living their personal lives. Many instructors have reported staying up all night or waking up very early to take the time to grade essays. If this is the outcome of assigning essays, it is very understandable as to why teachers seem to only assign a few essays per course, thus resulting in inadequate essay practice for the students. In an article titled “How Long Does it Take to Grade an Essay”, a lower-level English professor named Tina Blue argues that the essays take so long to grade because “…our students manage to do so much wrong in every single paper that the task of marking their atrocious grammar and usage, correcting their factual inaccuracies, untangling their essays ' incoherent structure (at both the paragraph and the essay level), and sorting out and explaining their logical fallacies requires an effort equivalent to that which Hercules expended in mucking out the Augean stables.” (Blue, 2003) Is this completely the students fault though? The best way to get good at something and to really understand it is through practice and feedback. If a student only writes three or four essays in a 10 week class is that really enough practice? Along with the lack of practice, is the lingering stress of deadlines and the weight the essay carries on a student’s final grade. After the essay is turned in it often takes one to two weeks to receive the feedback from the instructor. By that time the students are already focused on new assignments and are more than likely not even be