Computers can now grade students' writing

updated 10:06 a.m. ET May 9, 2005

COLUMBIA, Mo. - Student essays always seem to be riddled with the same sorts of flaws.  So sociology professor Ed Brent decided to hand the work off — to a computer.

Students in Brent's Introduction to Sociology course at the University of Missouri-Columbia now submit drafts through the SAGrader software he designed.  It counts the number of points he wanted his students to include and analyzes how well concepts are explained.  And within seconds, students have a score.

It used to be the students who looked for shortcuts, shopping for papers online or pilfering parts of an assignment with a simple Google search.  Now, teachers and professors are realizing that they, too, can tap technology for a facet of academia long reserved for a teacher alone with a red pen.

Software now scores everything from routine assignments in high school English classes to an essay on the GMAT, the standardized test for business school admission.  (The essay section just added to the Scholastic Aptitude Test for the college-bound is graded by humans).

Though Brent and his two teaching assistants still handle final papers — and grades — students are encouraged to use SAGrader for a better shot at an "A."  "I don't think we want to replace humans," Brent said.  "But we want to do the fun stuff, the challenging stuff.  And the computer can do the tedious but necessary stuff."

Developed with National Science Foundation funding, SAGrader is so far used only in Brent's classroom.  Like other essay-grading software, it analyzes sentences and paragraphs, looking for keywords as well as the relationship between terms.

Other programs compare a student's paper with a database of already-scored papers, seeking to assign it a score based on what other similar-quality assignments have received.

Educational Testing Service sells Criterion, which includes the "e-Rater" used to score GMAT essays.  Vantage Learning has IntelliMetric, Maplesoft sells Maple T.A., and numerous other programs are used on a smaller scale.

Most companies are private and offer no sales figures, but educators say use of such technology is growing.  Consider the reach of e-Rater: 400,000 GMAT test-takers annually, a half-million U.S. K-12 students and 46 international schools and districts.  ETS says an additional 2,000 teachers begin using its technology each month.

But it's tough to tout a product that tinkers with something many educators believe only a human can do.  "That's the biggest obstacle for this technology," said Frank Catalano, a senior vice president for Pearson Assessments and Testing, whose Intelligent Essay Assessor is used in middle schools and the military alike.  "It's not its accuracy.  It's not its suitability.  It's the believability that it can do the things it already can do."

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