Brian Rios
WR-122
Dr. Brown E:1 Automated Essay Graders Destroy Writing
The advancing world of computer technology has moved us forward in many areas, including grading tools. Software engineers have developed programs designed specifically for grading tools, such as automated essay graders (AES). The programs can be of great assistance for teachers with their work load, the programs are designed for quicker responses, which allow students to receive instant feedback and eliminates any type of bias. However, there is some controversy about the programs. College English Instructors should not be allowed to use them, because programs malfunction, cause a subsiding downfall of student teacher interaction, and mostly affecting the art of writing.
The first reason is the obvious problem that programs malfunction. It is inevitable that they mess up, or they intently are messed up. Research and studies have discovered that programs such as the automated essay graders program can be tricked. It said if you are able to know what the machine is calibrated in measuring that it is a simpler task to trick it. The New York Times published the article Essay-Grading Software Offers Professors a Break written by John Markoff states, “One longtime critic, Les Perelman, has drawn national attention several times for putting together nonsense essays that have fooled software grading programs into giving high marks.” So any person that has the knowledge of what the program measures to evaluate its grading process has the ability to fool it by writing a paper that meets the criteria needed to receive higher markings. This is unlikely to happen if a human teacher was to be grading the same paper that feed to the machine resulting in low markings.
Secondly, reason if teachers sustain usage of these type of programs there will be less interaction between students and teachers. Students may not look to teachers for feedback or assistance with papers because now there is a program or machine that is doing the grading. It can also create a barrier not only as a teacher student relationship but as human beings as well. A SALON magazine published article titled computer grading will destroy our schools: Feeding essays into a computer program tells students: No one cares what you have to say. Writer Benjamin Winterhalter, illustrates, “Thus, our culture will stop engaging with students on those very aspects of the humanities that make them worth studying in the first place. We are going to end up with a system that dispenses rewards in a way that is indifferent to – and divorced from – the most alluring parts of the humanities, those creative capacities that they let us engage. If our instruction in the humanities necessitates ignoring these abilities, then it is my opinion that there no longer is much point to teaching the humanities at all, and we should end the charade.” Basically translated what’s being insinuating is that the future beholds humans befriending computers instead of humans. It is a bit scary for the facts that it is already happening with humans and cell phones those things have come to be a human’s best friend.
As the last and most important reason to ban usage of these programs is the negative effects writing would obtain. To begin ideas are created by humans and those ideas are processed and developed through creativity an area that machines lack. With the decreasing creativity, how do machines judge feeling, another area machines lack unlike humans which are very familiar with. So how is a machine supposed to judge essays that have a specific tone or purpose? There are a number of key elements used in writing such as: tone; main ideas; genre; audience; purpose. These programs are unable to acknowledge those elements. When taken away of the art of writing there is not
