Alba Rivera

Mr. Rodolfo Rico

EDCI 2700
21 November 2015
Case 5: Computerized Essay Scoring
I do believe that researchers need to do the best they can to protect their students from
computerized scoring of essays. I think educators, and future educators, have a responsibility and
duty to their students to ensure that they be graded fairly and in a way that accurately reflects that
which they have been taught or led to believe is an appropriate way to write an essay. I believe
that it is a teacher's responsibility to grade an essay if they have been teaching their students how
to do it. I don't understand why it would be appropriate for an educator to show students how to
write essays and then not take the time to actually grade these essays themselves in the way that
way that they should with a rubric at hand that they have developed and can most discretely
determine if the objective has been learned or accomplished.
I believe that educators should therefore address these issues and maybe even have
students interact with them and get feedback from them. Educators could talk with students and
see what they think of the subject and how comfortable they would be and what their thoughts
are about it. Maybe educators will be surprised by what their students have to say. Not only
should they listen to what their students have to say but they should do their own research.
Educators should look at tests of validity to see whether or not an essay would be graded
similarly by machine as opposed to as by a human. Through this research they can also
determine whether or not the cost would be something that overcomes some of the drawbacks
that would be the result of using this type of technology.
In my own personal opinion, I don't believe that sacrificing a students grade would
justify the potential affordance for this technology. This is simply because I don't believe that
computers can quite understand things such as irony or humor in a paper and fully account that
into the grade as well. These are some pretty big yet, not all encompassing, drawbacks that just
really shouldn't be overlooked because the quality paper or essay can be graded poorly just for
the sake of time or potential affordance. It simply does not seem fair to me.