Dive Summary:
- MOOC provider edX will release free software that grades student essays and short written answers using artificial intelligence.
- While automated grading software for multiple choice and true-false tests is widely used, systems that grade written answers have many critics who say such systems can't "read" and are no match for a human grader.
- edX President Anant Agarwal, however, predicts that the software will be a useful tool that lets students write essays over and over again to improve the quality of answers, and edX expects the software to be widely adopted.
From the article:
... Dr. Agarwal said he believed that the software was nearing the capability of human grading.
“This is machine learning and there is a long way to go, but it’s good enough and the upside is huge,” he said. “We found that the quality of the grading is similar to the variation you find from instructor to instructor.” ...