By Maegan Vazquez

If you thought your professors were tough paper critics, just wait for EdX’s newly unveiled online essay grader software, which instantly grades student essays and short exam answers seconds after you press send. The software is part of a nonprofit platform founded by Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and offers online classes from top tier universities to students around the world and has been hailed as the “Linux of online learning.” EdX is also giving high school students the chance to take online courses at Ivy Leagues.

How does the technology ‘learn’ to grade? The tool asks a human to grade 100 essays or short written answers. Then, it becomes trained on the human’s grading method and grades other essays accordingly. The method will provide general feedback to tell a student whether they’re on-topic or not. It will also allow students to rewrite and resubmit their essays an unlimited amount of times.

Standardized testing has become an integral part of schooling in the United States, and this software may someday become as accessible as the Scantron. Thus, some fear that the tool may lead to standardization of writing, which hinders the creativity of students. It’s already happening in Utah — “Computer scoring produced virtually identical levels of accuracy, with the software in some cases proving to be more reliable.”

This generation of college students may have grown up to embrace technology that automatically grades multiple choice exams and software that can detect plagiarism in papers, but the EdX’s new tool has been under scrutiny by plenty in the academic world. Over 3,000 people have signed a petition to stop computerized grading. Plenty of Brooklyn College and CUNY professors have signed the pledge, but only a select few New York University staff members had the guts to sign publicly. Among those who signed: tenured Social & Cultural Analysis professor Andrew Ross (no stranger to speaking up), Llana Carroll (writing department), Meredith Kruse (MCC), and Computer Science professor Ernest Davis.

The petition has even got the signatures of some of academia’s finest, like Noam Chomsky.

While the software may take a load off of professors and give students the ability to view their graded essays in seconds — not weeks, it may still lack a human touch.

“It can’t tell you if you’ve made a good argument,” Mark Shermis, Professor of Education and Psychology at the University of Akron., told Radio Boston. “At this point the technology has matured enough to be used as a secondary reader and as a way to monitor human rating performance.” Shermis called the software “an aide for teachers. It’s not designed to replace teachers.” Les Pearlman, a retired director of writing and a current researcher at M.I.T., called the software tool “mind control.”

Professionals Against Machine Scoring Of Student Essays In High-Stakes Assessment wrote: “Computers cannot ‘read.’ They cannot measure the essentials of effective written communication: accuracy, reasoning, adequacy of evidence, good sense, ethical stance, convincing argument, meaningful organization, clarity, and veracity, among others.”

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