eGrader, A Software Application that Automatically Scores Student Essays: with a Postscript on Ethical Complexities

Abstract

Online and traditional teachers face several instructional challenges with regard to assessing student learning. This paper focuses on a software application that automatically scores student essay. The first part gives a brief overview of three commercial automated essay scoring systems. Then it describes the technical aspects of the machine grader developed by the authors, including an assessment of its performance. Although the statistical results were significant in finding a strong correlation between human and machine scorers and the other measures, follow-up non-quantitative evaluations led the researchers to discontinue using the eGrader. They concluded that while the eGrader's ability to measure objective evaluation criteria was successful, measuring subjective ideas proved to more complex and problematic.