Computer program
may simplify grading
By Lindsay Young
Senior staff writer
A computer program that can
actually grade an essay.
That may sound like just a dream
to professors who have to grade more
than 100 essays in one sitting, but
some professors claim they can make
that dream come true.
Thomas Landauer of the
University of Colorado at Boulder
and Peter Foltz of New Mexico State
University in Las Cruces, N.M.,
helped develop the Intelligent Essay
Assessor and have been using it in
their classrooms.
The technology for the Intelligent
Essay Assessor was in development
as many as 10 years ago, Landauer
said.
An earlier digital essay grader
looked at the mechanics of an essay
sucn as sentence structure, counting
commas and the length of words.
The Intelligent Essay Assessor, in
development for three years, can
determine what students have learned
and what they have not, Landauer
said.
Developers hope schools have to
wait only another couple of months
before they can get their hands on the
new invention.
According to Landauer, the pro
gram works like this:
The student types the essay into
the computer, or the student can bring
a disk with die essay on it. It works
well for distance education and other
Internet-based courses.
The program starts by analyzing
reference material and sample
graded essays the professor enters
into the program. It looks at how
words in the reference material and
the sample-graded essays compare
with the Students’ essays.
If the essay is similar to several
good ones, he said, the machine
gives it an A.
Some University of Nebraska
Lincoln professors said it was too
hard to tell whether such a program
could be helpful without trying it
first
But they said regardless of its
benefits, they may want to add a
human touch to a computer-graded
essay.
“I like the opportunity to do
that,” said David Alien, an assistant
English professor. Allen works with
the department of distance educa
tion and the division of continuing
studies.
Allen had the opportunity to
look last week at a sample of the
program and said, so far, he wasn’t
impressed.
“Is there a real advantage to
this?” he said. With what he has
seen of the program, it hasn’t given
back information that would neces
sarily be helpful to a student or a
teacher, he said.
People can try out the assessor
by going to http://lsa.colorado.edu/.
The site allows people to see exam
ples of scored essays and allows
j people to feed in their own essays.
It analyzes factual material only
in classes such as history, political
science, economics and science.
One benefit of the grader is that
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It allows the
professor to spend
time in better ways
than grading exams.”
Thomas Landauer
computer program developer
it is consistent, Landauer said. “It will
give the same grade to the same essay
every time,” he said.
He said the scores usually agree
with a professor or an expert grader’s
marks.
Also, if the essay is “very origi
nal” - either because it’s creative or
completely off the topic - the grader
will flag it and say that the professor
should look at it.
It also benefits the professor, he
said.
“It allows the professor to spend
time in better ways than grading
exams.”
David Forsythe, a political sci
ence professor, said it would take him
time to look at and figure out the pro
gram.
But, “it might be time-saving in
the long run,” Forsythe said.
So far, Landauer said, the
response from those who haven’t
tried it hasn’t been completely posi
tive.
“Unfortunately the people don’t
know anything about it,” he said.
“Computers didn’t used to be able to
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