Professors Are Now Using AI to Grade Essays. Are There Ethical Concerns?

A professor at Ithaca College runs part of each student's essay through ChatGPT, 'asking the AI tool to critique and suggest how to improve the work,' reports CNN. (The professor said 'The best way to look at AI for grading is as a teaching assistant or research assistant who might do a first pass... and it does a pretty good job at that.')

And the same professor then requires their class of 15 students to run their draft through ChatGPT to see where they can make improvements, according to the article:

Both teachers and students are using the new technology. A report by strategy consultant firm Tyton Partners, sponsored by plagiarismâdetection platform Turnitin, found half of college students used AI tools in Fall 2023. Meanwhile, while fewer faculty members used AI, the percentage grew to 22% of faculty members in the fall of 2023, up from 9% in spring 2023.

Teachers are turning to AI tools and platforms — such as ChatGPT, Writable, Grammarly and EssayGrader — to assist with grading papers, writing feedback, developing lesson plans and creating assignments. They're also using the burgeoning tools to create quizzes, polls, videos and interactives to up the ante' for what's expected in the classroom. Students, on the other hand, are leaning on tools such as ChatGPT and Microsoft CoPilot — which is built into Word, PowerPoint and other products.

But while some schools have formed policies on how students can or can't use AI for schoolwork, many do not have guidelines for teachers. The practice of using AI for writing feedback or grading assignments also raises ethical considerations. And parents and students who are already spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on tuition may wonder if an endless feedback loop of AI-generated and AI-graded content in college is worth the time and money.

A professor of business ethics at the University ofâVirginia 'suggested teachers use AI to look at certain metrics — such as structure, language use and grammar — and give a numerical score on those figures,' according to the article. ('But teachers should then grade students' work themselves when looking for novelty, creativity and depth of insight.')

But a writer's workshop teacher at the University of Lynchburg in Virginia 'also sees uploading a student's work to ChatGPT as a 'huge ethical consideration' and potentially a breach of their intellectual property. AI tools like ChatGPT use such entries to train their algorithms...'

Even the Ithaca professor acknowledged to CNN that 'If teachers use it solely to grade, and the students are using it solely to produce a final product, it's not going to work.'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.