Indiana First With Computerized Grading

Mz6 writes "Computerized grading has been talked about previously, however, the New York Times reports that Indiana has become the first state to grade high school English essays by computer. The computerized grading process, called 'e-rater', uses a 6-point rating scale and uses artificial intelligence to 'mimic the grading process of human readers'. The system was tested over a 2-year pilot program and produced results virtually identical to those of trained readers. The big question is, will other states begin to emulate Indiana by tossing human grading?"

comment moderation

[Jotaigna]

for the time being, i would trust more that program to moderate my comments.



c'mon people i was only joking dont mod me down, not noooo!!

So much for those essays

[Zancarius]

Perish the thought should students start writing about the dangers of artificial intelligence. They may very well fail!

Re:I smell lawsuits, how about you?

[m0rph3us0]

I think you've taken one to many collage level english classes my friend.

Those Indianans are ruining us!

[L. VeGas]

Lets just outsource all our test grading to Indiana too.

Re:I smell lawsuits, how about you?

[m0rph3us0]

s/to/too/. I feel stupid now.

Re:Google Bombing

[superpulpsicle]

Computerized grading is great.
Computerized grading is superb.
Computerized grading is excellent.
Computerized grading is outstanding.
Computerized grading is god.
Computerized grading is great.
Computerized grading is superb.
Computerized grading is excellent.
Computerized grading is outstanding.
Computerized grading is god.

Essay Result = A+

Perfect scores every time

[Rorschach1]

Ok, since you know the grading software is going to make it into the hands of the students, here's my scheme for perfect essays:

Step 1: Feed some encyclopedia articles, Wiki pages, and other random material on your subject into a Markoff chain generator.

Step 2: Use a genetic algorithm to generate variations of the text. Fitness is determined by the grade calculated.

Step 3: Repeat step 2 until desired grade is achieved. (And, of course, Profit!)

The result is totally worthless, but at first glance would probably appear legitimate even to a human reader.

Sort of like Slashdot posts.

Re:Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you got docked for overuse of commas.

AI

[Bugmaster]

That's actually a pretty novel way to approach the problem of creating Strong AI. Making smarter machines is hard, so what you do is dumb down the humans until even a coffee maker (or a grammar parser or whatever) would beat them in the Turing test. Damn, this is so sad.

e-Rater result?

[ackthpt]

Input: All your base are belong to us!

Output: A+

I can't wait

[proverbialcow]

...until some wiseass figures out a way spoof the grader, probably by sliding under the radar of whatever probabilistic models they've got that pass for spell- and grammar-checkers.

For example:

Flimblarm nif goondatakun, jut sekfar bel shon duc. Seempkin dar goolnac flar tefnek voz toulian; elmpar gef sogquel.

Grade: B+ Your use of double-negatives continues to haunt you, but I'm glad you've gotten over hanging participles.

Students

[Gettinglucky]

Now all the students need is e-writer so that they can just type in the subject and the score they want to achieve and then e-reader will grade it accordingly!!!

That's ok

[paranode]

schmoozing with the teacher to get higher grades

This works better for the Slashdot crowd. They are much better at romancing computers than people to get what they want.

Re:Not the First

[Sporkinum]

So are all IT jobs being outsourced to Indiana?

Re:I already want a copy of this.

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

> I bet I could write the other side of the equation: a program to create nonsensical gibberish that always gets A's.

I'll bet half the people here thought this as soon as they read the headline. The normal /. response is to spend 10 hours at the computer coding up something to do a task you can do in 1 hour with a pencil. :-) Of course the high school geek who does this will make piles of money selling the output to the football players, buy a nice ride, and get a prom date with a cheerleader. Isn't that the way it works?

Re:OSS?

[Glonoinha]

Slashdot First With Computerized Moderation.

Now with Computerized Moderation the famous Slashdot message site can pre-emptively down-mod 'Redundant' posts long before they are actually 'Redundant.' The computerized modding process, called 'e-modder', uses a 6-point rating scale and uses artificial intelligence to 'mimic the modding process of human readers - including doing stupid shit like modding the first instance of a concept as Redundant'.

India vs. Indiana

[the eric conspiracy]

Wouldn't it just be cheaper to grade the tests at call centers in India? What are those Indians doing when there are no incomming calls? Just slacking off??? They could be grading tests.

Standard Grading

[Tony]

The system was tested over a 2-year pilot program and produced results virtually identical to those of trained readers.

So it gives its favorite students 'A's without reading, least favorite students 'F's, and the rest arbitrary grades somewhere in between to mimic a bell curve?

Excellent!

"Artificial Intelligence is easy. It's artificial stupidity that impresses me." -- Arthur Oscar

Antidisestablishmentarianism!

[Bluesman]

By creating a vernacular consisting of elongated words and sophisticated verbiage, obviously indifferent to definition but simultaneously observing grammar regulations while eschewing colloquialisms, perhaps students may increase individual chances of achieving substantial academic acclaim.

If this works anything like the writing level indexes you find on word processors, it should be easy to fool.

Re:I already want a copy of this.

[Glonoinha]

Bah, right now the program takes an essay as input and outputs a grade. Simply reverse the pipe streams, push in an A and have the programs spit out a essay worthy of that A. Magic!

Re:Stupid

[servognome]

Generally comments were kept to a bare minimum on a good paper. "Good job!" or "Excellent research!" is about as lame as getting a 5/6 on a standardized essay exam from a computer grader.
Your feedback was actual words!? In my day all we got was a scratch-n-sniff sticker and had to guess the meaning of getting a "watermelon" on our essay.

Re:I smell lawsuits, how about you?

[Bombcar]

I wonder if it has bounds checking on input..... perhaps you could submit /proc/kcore and cause a buffer overflow and get r00t on the gr4d3b00k!

Babelfish

[Waffle Iron]

I will not trust computer grading until I see a computer-translated document that isn't laughable.

To illustrate my point, I'll restate it. [English -> German -> English]:

I do not trust the computer, which arranges, until I see a computer-translated document of this laughable isn't.

That's about how well a computer "comprehends" language today.

Computerized Story Posting

[alatesystems]

Slashdot First With Computerized Story Posting

Now with Computerized Story Posting, the artificial intelligence "seeks out" stories that have either been long archived or just posted the previous day and then posts them as new material. The program then ignores what is stated in the FAQ and disregards all emails stating that the story is a duplicate. This program is also known as "chrisd".

Other features include "mis-classification into the wrong topic", "making up stupid-titles-that-go-into-the-dept", and the most difficult, ignoring stories that should be posted.

Chris Benard [chrisbenard.net]

Scan-Tron

[MrBlackBand]

Anyone remember those Scan-Tron tests we had to take every once in a while? I hated those because unless each circle was filled out perfectly it would mark it wrong. Whenever I pointed out errors in grading to the teacher he or she would just tell me to fill it out better next time. Grrr.

Of course it was fun to mess with cheaters. If I noticed someone was copying off of my work I would make a point to put down all wrong answers. Then I would pretend to check over my work. The person who was cheating off of me would usually just take their test up to the teacher right away. When they sat back down I would make a big deal out of erasing every single one of my answers and doing the whole test over.
Their reaction was always priceless.