
Humans, the Latest MOOC Feature - danso
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/09/02/massachusetts-institute-technology-experiments-instructor-grading-massive-open
======
inputcoffee
I love that this story basically contradicts another trend that is in Hacker
News at the same time:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12414764](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12414764)

[https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2016/09/02/gradescope-
brings-a...](https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2016/09/02/gradescope-brings-ai-to-
grading/)

~~~
arjun810
I'm one of the founders of Gradescope (the company in the other post).

I see where you're coming from, but I actually think that both of these posts
describe ways for students to get more open ended assessment, rather than
automatically graded multiple choice questions (i.e. what's typical in MOOCs
and Scantrons).

~~~
inputcoffee
I agree with that, but would you say that the "trend", if there is one, is
towards providing that through AI, or more humans?

If I recall, they had computers grade the GMAT essays for at least 10 years,
but they had to have a human in the loop because that is the ultimate measure
for whether a computer is "correct" in terms of grading an essay.

~~~
arjun810
The trend is towards neither, I'd say. The biggest trend has been towards
online automatically graded multiple choice & short answer questions that
aren't really open ended.

The automated essay grading stuff typically looks at writing style more than
content, but it's true that it's a problem that tons of people have worked on
and there's been some cool progress there as well. We're not really working on
bringing AI to essay grading ourselves though.

