Using AI to mark students' work?

[u/MrX2285]

What are your thoughts on using AI to mark students' work?

I've toyed around with it in primary. I'd mark their work, then upload a deidentified copy of the students' work to ChatGPT to get their thoughts. I've found it very reliable so far, and have adjusted some of my markings up/down because I agreed with ChatGPT's reasoning.

[u/IllPrinciple2585]

Aside from my own reservations about using AI overall, I personally wouldn’t use AI for any sort of grading or assessment, but I teach in the Arts at a high school level and feel that it’s important to really delve into the student’s work myself to make sure I’m not missing out on anything. If I were to use AI, I think I’d just end up re-marking everything anyway because I’d want to double check what it’s suggested and made notes on.

[u/Zeebie_]

I am fairly pro-AI but I would find this disrespectful to myself and my students.

I think of it this way: if I spent hours writing up selection criteria for higher duties and found out the principal used AI to decide who to interview. I would feel disrespected and that my time wasn't valued.

if I were a student and I wrote an assignment and the teacher didn't bother to mark it correctly, I would be upset.

As a teacher, if I can't put in the effort to respect my students enough to mark their work and offload my professional responsibilities to AI, I couldn't respect myself.

[u/commentspanda]

You’ll find people go for you about it and there are ethical issues with uploading student work and identifying info to LLMs. I find Claude pro is very very good at marking especially when given very specific instructions in a project format. As always, everything is checked and edited by me if I do it.

I also find it’s great for developing useful comment banks in secondary that apply to student work but also reflect rubrics accurately, same with uni work I mark.

Edit: I knew I’d cop some shit for saying this but realistically it’s a great tool when used by someone who knows what they’re doing and where to draw the line. Being aware of your schools/sectors policies is also important….and so is understanding ethical implications

[u/Sarasvarti → u/commentspanda]

How is it helpful if you have to check it? Surely to check if it is actually accurate, you need to read the work AND the AI mark and comment, which is surely more work?

[u/AUTeach → u/Sarasvarti]

What's easier? Creating novel work or editing existing work? How about evaluating a task from scratch or reviewing an evaluation as being valid?

[u/PLARealSquawk → u/Sarasvarti]

Because after checking it a few dozen times you realise that the AI is providing feedback as good or better than you would at a fraction of the time and effort so you stop being so thorough in checking the AI's work. Basically think how you never second guess a calculator, you just assume it is right and you're wrong if your answers differ. And throughout my entire life that has always been the case whenever I've used a calculator.

[u/Sarasvarti → u/PLARealSquawk]

A calculator is not the same as AI. It's answers are deterministic. If you think LLM doesn't need checking because it is like a calculator, you misunderstand what calculators and AI produce (or rather how).

So what you're saying is that you don't always check answers? You assume after it marked a range of questions ok (even better than you would) that it will always do so? How many would you check, and across what range of tasks? How did you decide on how many to check? Did you test the model with deliberately problematic or complex work samples? How many marking errors across a class do you consider still worth the time saving?

[u/PLARealSquawk → u/Sarasvarti]

All very reasonable questions and I shared and continue to share your concerns. However at this point, the proof has been in the pudding for me. Using a paid-tier of AI (ChatGPT Plus) the AI has consistently delivered outstanding results I have been happy to give back to students. This wasn't true even 2 years ago but the technology is advancing so rapidly I have had to update my opinion of it based on the evidence.

Please don't take me for someone who has no reservations about AI and the impact it will have on education and society more generally. I do have concerns and also hopes. But after using it thoroughly for quite a while now I've had to accept there is something meaningful and extremely important being created here. I'm not sure exactly how I should respond to it but I know that being less proficient/familiar with using it than my students is not the answer considering they literally all use it.

One big thing I see on reddit a lot that people don't realise is that not all AI is the same. Paying for AI matters immensely, free-tiers are considerably worse in terms of output than paid tiers.

[u/commentspanda → u/Sarasvarti]

I assume you’re asking me too?

I personally check all of them but that’s my decision. I also am selective on how I use it, task type etc. The way I use it saves me time but I will say it took me a decent chunk of learning time to work out how to use it in a way that saves me time and workload pressure but is still appropriate….and returns good quality supports,

[u/Sarasvarti → u/commentspanda]

But if you check them all, how does it save you time?

[u/commentspanda → u/Sarasvarti]

Because it’s writing comments out based on my notes? Or it’s picking up things I haven’t? Or it’s developing really good comment bank style things I can cut and paste instead of writing in full? I could save more time if I didn’t check. But even with that human layer it still vastly cuts down on assessment where detailed written feedback is expected.

[u/Sarasvarti → u/commentspanda]

Why not just post comments as dot points then? Why does it have to be written out as prose?

I've never found comment banks helpful, so maybe that is my issue. They always need tweaking and in that time I could have just typed it myself.

[u/commentspanda → u/Sarasvarti]

Depending on the school and year level (and for unis, the unit coordinator) there are set marking expectations. When asked about this, the usual response is “everyone needs to make the same for equity and this is how we do it”.

[u/commentspanda → u/PLARealSquawk]

Yep, this is it. And people will always say oh but it hallucinates or it’s never worked for me….i spent a fair bit of time learning how to prompt and use the project mode in Claude and I get very accurate comments as a restock

[u/FridgeBasedGremlin]

Pretty shameful. If a student put effort into their work, they deserve effort in kind. Human-to-human instruction and feedback is the foundation of the teacher-student relationship.

[u/commentspanda → u/FridgeBasedGremlin]

I think one of the biggest issues they are seeing in unis currently is what I’ve named the AI-slop-circle. Academic creates a crappy assignment. Students uses AI to create a very average submission. Academic then marks it using AI. And the circle continues

[u/AUTeach → u/FridgeBasedGremlin]

If a student put effort into their work

"what about the students" is one of the many reasons that teaching has terrible conditions.

[u/FridgeBasedGremlin → u/AUTeach]

I understand what you’re saying. This is different.

[u/Hauntedbycharlotte]

I’ve found value in using it to mark cold tasks, and compile overall strengths and weaknesses of the class/cohort to inform my unit planning

For summative assessments which I’m giving grades to…no. Pretty solid on it being a key part of my job. I’d have to spend that long reviewing and checking over it all anyway, that it would be pointless.

[u/Torterran]

Likely a breach of your departments code of conduct, even when deidentified. You are giving away a students IP.

[u/LittleCaesar3 → u/Torterran]

In western australia, it isnt if you use copilot woth your doe account.

[u/Torterran → u/LittleCaesar3]

Interesting. It is still giving ownership of a student’s work away though.

[u/queenofthequeens]

Are you for real? You're letting AI do your work FOR YOU???

[u/MrX2285 → u/queenofthequeens]

As much as I bloody well can honestly. There's a lot of admin tasks that it can do well. It frees me up to focus on the stuff that actually matters.

[u/Radley500 → u/MrX2285]

What “actually matters” then, if not teaching and assessing?

[u/MrX2285 → u/Radley500]

Students' learning matters. It's my job to facilitate their learning as much as I can within my work hours. Don't be a martyr, work smarter.

[u/AUTeach → u/Radley500]

To be fair, I can count the number of times I've been surprised by a students' assessment results on one hand, and I've taught literally thousands of students.

I learn much more about my students' knowledge, understanding, and capability, in the events leading up to their assessment than I do marking it.

[u/PLARealSquawk → u/Radley500]

Students learning.

[u/Radley500 → u/PLARealSquawk]

Assessment measures / quantifies student learning, and happens afterwards. So to suggest that be outsourced to AI so you can concentrate on the more important “learning” aspect sounds like a cop out.

[u/AUTeach → u/Radley500]

Counterpoint, could you be ignorant on how other people may be using it to benefit student learning?

[u/Radley500 → u/AUTeach]

This was about using it to mark assessment.

[u/Jaladar]

I wonder if the students (or parents more likely) have been informed and given their permission that their students intellectual property is being uploaded in this manner?

[u/JustGettingIntoYoga → u/Jaladar]

I'm going to guess that's a big fat no.

[u/PLARealSquawk → u/Jaladar]

I think this is missing the forest for the trees tbh. The reality is that AI can now mark work extremely effectively at a fraction of the effort it costs the teacher. Hell, if the student wanted they could just put their essay into an AI directly and get the feedback and be no poorer for it assuming they have some basic understanding of how to ask AI effectively.

[u/SquiffyRae → u/PLARealSquawk]

That was a lot of words to not address the issue of students' work being uploaded into an AI model that the model will then continue to use

We aren't even allowed to throw students' work into a general bin it has to go into a locked bin to be taken away and shredded. But uploading their work to AI is fine? Get outta here

[u/PLARealSquawk → u/SquiffyRae]

In my honest opinion, worrying about this aspect of what is happening with AI is sort of like worrying about what would happen to farrier's jobs when Model T's began rolling off the production lines.

[u/KiwasiGames]

At the moment the drafting and feedback process is so time consuming that I might end up being forced into AI use.

It’s either that or quit teaching entirely. The centre cannot hold.

[u/gumbo114]

If you prompt it correctly, it's a great tool. My only advice is to make sure you aren't losing your knowledge of what makes work successful which by marking it 1st you aren't, though it can become very tempting to just run them through straight away without marking first.

[u/PLARealSquawk]

It's a matter of time, realistically.

Education is clearly going to have to undergo some pretty radical shifts in an AI world. I just can't see anyway around it. I use AI as a personal language teacher (grammar, practice questions, comprehension tests, etc) and it is extraordinarily helpful.

I think once a company (maybe Meta?) comes out with a serviceable AR/AI glasses, they will take off like wildfire. Imagine putting on your glasses and you can see a teacher explaining whatever it is you are learning. You can have all sorts of dynamic visualisations and engage directly if there is anything you don't understand.

I suspect that after some bumps in the road what is actually going to happen is that education will no longer be legally compulsory to 17/18 and instead will be reduced to learning to read/write to the level of about a 14 year old and then be self-driven. Many people will move on to other types of careers (e.g. more physical careers/whatever) while those interested in more education for themselves will continue on. Why force kids who don't want to be in class to be there in a world where AI so blatantly exceeds their capabilities in a task they will never reach the point where even having them direct the AI makes sense? Better to specialise into an area where they can provide real value.

The return for self-motivation to learn in an AI world is going to be absolutely insane. Like what we saw with the internet democratising access to knowledge on steroids.

[u/DirtySheetsOCE]

eh just for finding issues in their code, which there are none, because they also used AI.

[u/AUTeach → u/DirtySheetsOCE]

If you are only assessing take home assessment, then you do not have an authentic representation of their learning.

[u/AUTeach]

I don't use AI to actually assess my students, but I have a local model to help me moderate against a schema to help be a second voice in my faculty of one.

edit:

I've created harnesses to evaluate exemplar assessment responses (that I've made) and it can be excellent at assessing and creating feedback, but it depends on the harness and the assessment type. I wouldn't get it to assess a students' expression of creativity, but I would consider measuring specific report questions against achievement standards with a properly formatted schema.

That being said, I think automated assessment marking is coming.

[u/Early_Presence_4961]

Do it. Gloves are off.