Software Developed to Grade Essays

Summary:

The SA Grader is the new big hit at the University of Missouri at Columbia. Ed Brent a Sociology teacher at the school designed this new program. This program was made to make teachers life a whole lot easier. The SA Grader grades everything from a basic assignment in High School all the way up to a essay on the GMAT.

This program is different from the other ones all ready out there in the classrooms. The program reads the paper and determines if the student was on topic and if the student hit the right point the teacher wanted covered. Other programs would compare your paper to another paper and determine the grade that way. The SA grader is only being used in ED Brent’s classroom so far but he loves it. Ed Brent doesn’t have his students submit finals to this program, but basically everything else that is important during the course, which a lot of the times is the tedious ones. This program isn’t being developed to run classroom and take the place of a teacher, but to just take a little load off the teacher.

All over the country there a various programs like the SA Grader being used by teachers. For example, the Essay assessor which is being used in middle schools and the military. The Reason its not being used everywhere is the believability that the program can actually grade an essay and give a true score. Different areas respond to these programs differently. Some swear by it and some wouldn’t give it the time of day. 60, 000 11th graders in Indiana have there essay graded by these programs as well as 10,000 9th graders.

Everyone agrees that these programs aren’t perfect but really take a lot of work off the teachers. Some students say they can try to cheat the system by adding in big words or submitting a paper a few times until you know exactly what the program is looking for. The SA Grader does take some of ED Brent’s time though. He has to tell the computer exactly what he’s looking for, key points he wants to be addressed and so on. This programs expanded ED Brent’s classroom by going from multiple choice question to essays. But in the end the time put in exceeds the time he would have had to put out grading papers.

Opinion:

I