What Happens When Computer Grades Our Essays

Mimi Gaudiano

ACCURACY VS. SPEED: Using a computer to grade essays may be fast, but it also makes mistakes that a human would not, causing some to fear ramifications on college admissions.

Jayarithanyaa,VR

Having a Computer grade student’s essays would be very difficult for students because computers do not understand feelings and the thoughts we are trying to convey through them. But the computer is not biased which would also satisfy many students in their scores and the method of correcting.

The NPR states that computer grades our essay faster than a teacher but not well like how a teacher corrects it. Computers may make some errors which teachers do not make. As stated by the NPR , A student had his essay corrected by the computer which showed many errors than what the student made. This brought his grade down unnecessarily. Computers ignore Certain things that may bring the students grade down.

Computer grading our essays would be a bit more stressful for students because of their worries about their grade. Computers are the best at grading the optical mark recognition sheets used for multiple choice questions which have fixed answers. It does not have to judge and correct on its own. It can not have to make mistakes and will not have any grade breakdown for students which will not stress them out.
Computers grading our essays may affect our college applications also due to low grades. Not only and also the mistakes the computer finds which were not a mistakes in the first place. This can affect college admissions.

Most of the students may take it as a hypothetical question due to some favors the computer grading the essays and some are against computer grading the essays.

 Deliberate Magazine states that computers are different and do not have mental capacity as humans. And it also states that only a teacher can grade the essays fairly and accurately. Teachers always check for convincing arguments,organization, thesis statements whereas  computers do not do that. Computers can be more efficient but not accurate.

Computers are so advanced and do grade essays very critically. They adapt to a single answer but cannot judge answers. They also do not think like a teacher in any situation. Computers can never replace teachers or any human beings in certain areas. One of that areas is the essays. Junior Kalie Benson says, “ computers do not grade fairly because it grades only in a certain way.” But Freshman Maria Bolgar says, “ the computer will grade me fairly.”

The Smithsonian  states that it’s not just teachers who will get more high tech;students will too. If students learn what the program is looking for, they could simply write a program themselves to in turn write the perfect essay based on the softwares specifications. Perhaps in the future, computerized teachers will be grading computerized students.

Computers grading the essays may bring down the number of students attending colleges or may just reduce the opportunities of many good colleges for students as computer grading the essays may affect their college application. Computers can be used in classes for teaching by the teachers but cannot be used to replace the teachers for correcting essays. This may even lead to students getting poor marks or not getting a A. The computer might not be able to differentiate between few thing whether it is correct or not. Few students may be happy for an unbiased correction for computer grading essays if their teacher was very biased in their class.  I would never want  want the computer scoring my essays because it may make few mistakes in correcting than a teacher and cannot ask it for recorrection. And also I cannot improve my essay and get extra 2 percent grade of the essay for the improvised essay. It makes my situation worse than my teacher scoring my essays. This happens to all the majority members. The minority of people who support computer grading your essays consists of people who are expert essay writers who can get good scores in both cases. Freshman Eric M Badjan says, “I would not mind a computers grading my essay because I do not make much errors.” The majority never wants the computer scoring the essays.And  people also  thinks that computers are fair graders than a teacher.

Grading essays are not such an easy task and no one can grade as perfect as teacher. Teacher only searches for all the main points whereas computer sees for a very good sentence structure and many new or nice vocabulary. These may make the students feel easier and comfortable with the teachers than with a  computer.

The Washington Post states that computers are unable to judge the elements like logic, clarity and accuracy which we link with good writing. It also states that computer use different methods than humans to judge writings of students. Computers are coded to score papers written to specific prompts

Computers get progressively worse at scoring as the length of the writing increases, compelling test makers to design shorter writing tasks that do not represent the range and variety of writing assignments needed to prepare students for the more complex writing they will encounter in college. Computer scoring systems can be “gamed” because they are poor at working with human language, further weakening the validity of their assessments and separating students not on the basis of writing ability but on whether they know and can use machine-tricking strategies.

Essays are assigned to students by the teachers for just checking how well they understood the topic and how well they analyze it and bring their creativity in for some elements like thesis, accuracy and mainly writing skills. But as the computer does not check for those, there is no use of assigning essays to students when computers grade essays. The computer will not grade a student’s essays as fairly as a teacher. The computer will also not give an effective feedback like how a teacher does to make students realize their errors and improve it next time. Badjan also supports the statement by stating “ The computer does not give me an effective feedback.”