The Quiz-O-Matic Grader

I sat down at a coffee shop around two pm this afternoon and graded quizzes until about six. My boyfriend, V., was with me, working on a computer model for his financial industry job. By the time I had graded 117 of the quizzes, I was ready to gag if I ever saw another... which led to him proposing that computers should be able to grade quizzes for me, thus saving my time for more meaningful tasks, like whining about how much work I do on the weekends. I said that a computer could probably grade the definitions and fill-in-the-blanks questions, but could not effectively grade the open-ended questions or the diagrams. He suggested that it could probably do the open-ended ones through some kind of intelligent word, context, and grammar check. The thing is, the answers that eleven and twelve-year-olds come up with could stump the smartest grammar checker - not to mention many humans - but that doesn't make their answers wrong! Well, what about making fewer of your questions open-ended, he asked. I thought it would be better just to hire more teachers (or get us secretaries!) so that we'd have fewer papers to grade and could continue to ask meaningful open-ended questions on quizzes and homework. Come to think of it, an assistant would be just great. Especially if she or he would report back to me on the types of misconceptions and mistakes that were common among my students so I could adjust my teaching accordingly.

The quiz grades were as expected: the seventh graders rocked my world and did very well, but the sixth graders struggled a lot more. Hopefully, they will do better on the second quiz now that they know what to expect.