Hello all! Welcome to the discussion on Automated Essay Scoring, a new technology that is slowly but surely being implemented in both secondary and post-secondary schools. We have provided you with three news articles to read on this issue. You only need to comment on ONE of these articles, namely the New York Times article found directly below this post, but we have provided a few other articles on this issue if you are interested in this topic.

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Imagine taking a college exam, and, instead of handing in a blue book and getting a grade from a professor a few weeks later, clicking the “send” button when you are done and receiving a grade back instantly, your essay scored by a software program.

And then, instead of being done with that exam, imagine that the system would immediately let you rewrite the test to try to improve your grade.

EdX, the nonprofit enterprise founded by Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to offer courses on the Internet, has just introduced such a system and will make its automated software available free on the Web to any institution that wants to use it. The software uses artificial intelligence to grade student essays and short written answers, freeing professors for other tasks.

The new service will bring the educational consortium into a growing conflict over the role of automation in education. Although automated grading systems for multiple­choice and true­false tests are now widespread, the use of artificial intelligence technology to grade essay answers has not yet received widespread endorsement by educators and has many critics.

Anant Agarwal, an electrical...

For a new technology to make it in the market it must hurdle three big barriers. One: Are potential customers aware of it? Two: Does the technology work? Three: Do potential customers actually believe that the technology works?

Many times, the last is the hardest to overcome.

Just consider the case of poor, and poorly described, artificial intelligence applications. For a long time, the de facto definition of AI was essentially, “That stuff computers can’t do yet.”

Yet technologies stuck in this particular uncanny valley do occasionally manage to get free--if the conditions are right. And that may be positive news for edtech’s current believability-challenged...

Jeff Pence knows the best way for his 7th grade English students to improve their writing is to do more of it. But with 140 students, it would take him at least two weeks to grade a batch of their essays.

So the Canton, Ga., middle school teacher uses an online, automated essay-scoring program that allows students to get feedback on their writing before handing in their work.

"It doesn't tell them what to do, but it points out where issues may exist," said Mr. Pence, who says the a Pearson WriteToLearn program engages the students almost like a game.

With the technology, he has been able to assign an essay a week...