Automated essay scoring, or AES, is the use of specialized computer programs to assign grades to essays written in an educational setting, a form of educational assessment and an application of natural language processing whose objective is to classify a large set of texts into a small number of discrete grade categories, making it a problem of statistical classification. Growing interest in AES has been driven by rising education costs, demands for accountability, imposed standards, and advancing information technology that promises to measure educational achievement at reduced cost. Its use in high-stakes testing has generated significant backlash, with opponents pointing to research suggesting computers cannot yet grade writing accurately and arguing that such use promotes teaching writing in reductive ways aimed at the test itself.
Facts
Core ClaimComputer programs applying natural language processing can assign grades to written essays that approximate the scores human raters would give. 1 Origin YearMarks Ellis Page's 1966 argument that essays could be scored by computer; his working Project Essay Grade (PEG) program followed in 1968. FAQs
Is automated essay scoring as reliable as human graders?
The best-known comparison claimed parity with humans, but that claim has been strongly contested.
It is contested. In 2012 the Hewlett Foundation sponsored the Automated Student Assessment Prize on Kaggle, and the investigators reported that automated scoring was as reliable as human scoring. That claim was not backed by statistical tests, because some vendors required that no such tests be run as a condition of taking part, and it has since been strongly contested, including by Randy E. Bennett of the Educational Testing Service. Critics also argued that the study design gave the machines an advantage.
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Automated essay scoring
Wikimedia Foundationlead paragraph
Automated essay scoring (AES) is the use of specialized computer programs to assign grades to essays written in an educational setting. It is a form of educational assessment and an application of natural language processing.
History section
In 1966, he argued for the possibility of scoring essays by computer, and in 1968 he published his successful work with a program called Project Essay Grade (PEG).
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