Feb. 26, 2016 the Racquette Editor-in-Chief
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Who — or What — is Grading Your Papers?
Forest Ashley Staff Writer
Imagine that paper you wrote was not being graded by your professor, but by a mathematically engineered program. It is an English major’s worst nightmare come to reality. Some schools districts and even colleges are starting to use a program that grades what you write instead of your professor. The program is called edX. It was founded by Harvard University and MIT in 2012 according to the edX website. edX has ties with many colleges including Harvard University, Berkeley University of California, The University of Texas System, Columbia University of New York City and Boston University to name a few. edX is a website that has massive open online courses — or MOOC — open to anyone who wants to take them. The company’s mission statement, according to their website, is to increase access to high quality education for everyone everywhere, enhancing teaching and learning on campus and online. It seems like a good idea; however, a lot of the grading that goes into the programs offered is done by a computer, and not a person. The idea behind that being the grading will be more accurate and help produce stronger learners,
while at the same time lending a helping hand to the professors who usually grade the papers and tests. There is also another program, PEG — Project Easy Grade — that also grades papers for teachers who have students from third grade to twelfth grade. PEG writing technology, much like the edX program, is designed for the same thing, to help make better writers and to help teachers. According the PEG website, “The technology is based on more than 40 years of research by Dr. Ellis Batten Page, whose pioneering work in the field of computational linguistics has distinguished him as the father of computer-based essay scoring.� The idea being that the program is more accurate at grading a paper than a group of teachers, who often agree on a grade that is lower than the one the PEG program would calculate. However, I find it slightly disturbing to think that something I wrote could be graded by technology. At what point do we stop and ask ourselves whether this technology is needed or whether we just trying to see what we can get out of technology. There is a lot that goes into writing; emotion and connection to an audience, as well as the grammatically correct formation of writing. The PEG program is designed to
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find grammatical errors and any sentence that is not on topic. However, as any writer knows, there are some rules that are allowed to be broken. The program would be unable to differentiate between some sentences that lead to the next point, or perhaps identifying topics that bridge off from the original. The idea to create the PEG and edX programs was sound, and founded on research the creators believe to be better not only for the writer or student, but also for the teacher and professor. Call me old fashioned, but I prefer my actual professor reading and grading my paper, rather than a machine. I pay all this money to go to school, put forth effort to learn and grow, and overall change into a better writer, learner, and member of society. I would hope that I would at least have the respect granted to me to have my actual professor teaching and helping me by being the one grading my papers. The program is an English majors’ worst nightmare, and I can only think a teacher’s worst nightmare as well. If we rely on technology to grade our papers, at what point do we decide if technology is better to teach with as well as grade? It’s doubtful that this would happen, but it makes you wonder,
doesn’t it? Humans as a species have a natural instinct to be storytellers. Writing is a big part of our society. Whether these stories are in the form of books, screenplays, plays, or even papers, all are stories the author is trying to tell. It doesn’t matter if the story is educational or fictional; writing is meant to be read by a living and breathing person, someone who appreciates the art form that is writing; and, essentially, storytelling. As students and learners, I think it is important to learn everything that goes into writing, even if writing or English is not your major, because writing is something that you will carry with you into any field you go into. With that in mind, I can understand why teachers would think using the PEG program for students from third to twelfth grade and the edX program for college would help mold stronger writers, but writing is more than just being grammatically correct and staying on theme. Therefore, I believe that written works should - and need to be - graded by a person. Writing is a form of connection, and I know that I want to keep that connection between a living person, and not technology.
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