Writer and teacher John Warner lists his thoughts on automated essay grading for InsideHigherEd.

He comes up with 22. For me, the ones that stand out are these:

6. … Automated grading is supposed to “free” the instructor for other tasks, except there is no more important task. Grading writing, while time consuming and occasionally unpleasant, is simply the price of doing business.

7. The only motivations for even experimenting, let alone embracing automated grading of student writing are business-related.

9. Is it possible that there are some things we should leave to people, rather than software? Do we remember that “efficiency” and “productivity” are not actually human values? If essays need to be graded, shouldn’t we figure out ways for humans to do it?

19. That MIT and Stanford, two universities of high esteem, are behind EdX and the automated grading nonsense, should cause shame among their faculty, at least the ones that profess in the humanities.

22. The purpose of writing is to communicate with an audience. In good conscience, we cannot ask students to write something that will not be read. If we cross this threshold, we may as well simply give up on education. I know that I won’t be involved. Let the software “talk” to software. Leave me out of it.

Read the rest!