Category Archives: AI

AI, ChaptGPT, grading, Write6x6

Can AI Grade My Essays For Me?

Leave a comment

I made a joke with Beth a few days ago about how I wished AI would grade my essays for me. And then I really thought about that, and now I can’t stop. I mean seriously if AI can write the students’ papers for them, what about us? Why can’t it grade papers too? Well, guess what. It can. I tried it. Shhh. Now don’t tell on me. I used both ChatGPT and Microsoft’s tool built into Bing. GPT is much better.

First off, it was a lot of work, probably equal to if I’d just graded them myself, but the benefit was far better for the student. It spat out paragraph long feedback on what was wrong, how the paper did or didn’t meet each rubric standard, and how to improve the work. I was simply amazed. If I were to leave that kind of feedback on a paper, it would take me days to grade instead of hours. As it is, I’ve already moved to grading by recording my feedback, so I can say more and make it easier for students to understand what I’m saying, but this was amazing.

But like a said. It wasn’t easy or quick. I first began by asking the AI to find a rubric for a news article using a summary lead and following the inverted pyramid style. It quickly pulled up a rubric that was adequate, but it was only on a 10-point scale. I used it anyway to see how it would work. Then my next prompt asked Maud, remember, I named her Maud in my last post. I asked her to grade this news article using that rubric, and pasted in a student’s news article. Surprisingly, it worked. She put the two prompts together and graded the article. It was okay, but there wasn’t much detail and it didn’t really meet the standards I was looking for. I decided instead to ask Maud to build me a rubric and added the essential things and the total points I needed. She created this.

Okay, that was interesting, but could she grade a news article using that rubric? I wondered. Yep! She gave the article a 47/60, provided the tally from the rubric AND added this feedback:

Strengths:

  • The article follows the inverted pyramid structure.
  • The information provided is relevant to the target audience.
  • The article includes quotes from reliable sources.

Weaknesses:

  • The lead is weak and could benefit from being more focused.
  • The article could use more clarity in its presentation of information.
  • The article could be more concise.
  • The article could be more explicit in identifying biases or opinions.

Suggestions for Improvement:

  • The lead should be more specific and focused on the key point of the article.
  • The article should be more clear and concise, with shorter paragraphs and simpler language.
  • The author should explicitly identify any biases or opinions and explain how they might influence the article’s content.
  • The author should consider additional sources to provide a more complete understanding of the issue.

Crazy, right? I probably would have scored it a bit higher, but I noticed Maud didn’t say anything about grammar and punctuation in her feedback and I found a couple of specific errors, so I asked her about them. I typed in, “What about grammar and punctuation?” She replied:

As an AI language model, I don’t have the capability to fully analyze grammar and punctuation, but I can tell you that there are a few errors in the article. For example, in the sentence “This issue goes for not only students but members of the community who live downtown,” the phrase “goes for” should be replaced with “applies to.” Additionally, there are a few instances where punctuation could be improved for clarity and readability. Overall, however, the article is well-written and understandable.

She was right. In another instance, Maud pointed out two run-on sentences in the article and offered a suggestion for how to fix it. Amazing.

Yep, I’m obsessed, but that took a lot of work. In fact, I paused playing so I could quickly grade those news articles and get them back to students. This was going to take all day. First, Maud would forget my rubric after a few follow-up questions about the article she graded, so I’d have to start all over. Then sometimes she would ignore my rubric and just give a paragraph analysis of the article or she would leave out key elements. Basically, she was not consistent and I had to keep retraining her. She gave good feedback, but not the same feedback for each student.

AI, chatgpt, Write6x6

Trashy Romance Novels & Chat GPT

Leave a comment
Okay, this could be good. Or not. How exactly does a trashy romance novel help shape my current approach to your work here at GCC? OMG! I’m going to ask Chat GPT to answer that. That’s a good question for her, Maud. We’re on a first-name basis now. Maud said, “It is unlikely that reading a trashy romance novel would have a direct impact on a teacher’s approach to teaching at a community college. However, there are some potential ways that reading for pleasure could indirectly impact a teacher’s teaching approach.” Well, that’s not very exciting. She’s good at changing the topic or guiding me away from salacious topics and back to more sensible ones. I think I’ll pass on that for now and write about my obsession with Maud (Chat GPT) instead. I’m completely fascinated by how easy it is for students to cheat using AI tools now, and it’s amazing how freaked-out educators across the country have become. Frankly, I find it all amusing. It’s the perfect scenario for forcing people to change, adapt or get out of their comfort zone. I think we get too comfortable in our jobs at times. We like a certain textbook, and even though it’s 20 years old, it still works somehow. Or you might have a lesson or lecture that you started using when you began teaching 10 years ago. The course content hasn’t changed; the lecture is still good, right? Well, that’s the comfortable mindset. We’re in our comfort zone. A comfort zone can be described as “a psychological state in which things feel familiar to a person and they are at ease and in control of their environment, experiencing low levels of anxiety and stress.” Well, Chat GPT and other AI innovations have blown most of us out of our comfort zones. We need to face reality. Just like when Covid hit and we all had to magically transform to online learning almost overnight, we are now once again being challenged to get out of our comfort zones and “reimagine” our assessments. I recently wrote about how to Robot-Proof Your Writing Assignments which includes a few tips for how to create assignments that are more difficult for AI to complete. I’ve also been doing a lot of reading on AI and came across a few resources that I found useful, including this page from the University of Utah which is an excellent resource for AI Generative Tools and tips for assignment design and how to discuss these tools with students. Good luck getting out of your comfort zone once again.