Hey teachers, Automated Essay Grading is on our Doorstep!

A duel between a teacher and a robot with the prize being who will get to grade the pile of essays. Courtesy of Dall E (Openai.com)

In this blog, I want to focus on a particular use of AI: automated essay grading. Here, I use the word essay to cover the broadest range of text students write and submit to their teachers. Such texts include but are not limited to writing paragraphs in proficiency testing, essays, term papers, opinion papers, blog posts, reports, summaries, graduation projects, theses, and dissertations. Customarily, the onus falls on teachers to assess and grade these texts.

The AI cloud is now hovering over our heads, teachers, students, parents, educational authorities, academic institutions, and scholars. You name it. I have written elsewhere about the overall impact of AI on the education project, and it is no less than a tsunami. This time, though, I just home in on essay grading as a quintessentially teacherly function being easily transferable to AI, so it becomes automated.

A teacher is handing essays back to students that he personally graded.

A few questions come to mind as we contemplate the new writing assessment landscape: Can AI replace teachers in grading essays? How can it do so? In what ways can this be advantageous? In what ways can it be detrimental? Will this allow teachers to free up time for more creative teaching and…