InfoAnda - Robo-readers: the new teachers' helper in the U.S. |

Pakistanis angry over detentions in Times Sq. case
Monday, May 24, 2010
ISLAMABAD – Relatives of three men detained by Pakistan for alleged links to the suspect in the attempted Times Square bombing say the men are innocent.
They

Taiwan denies boycotting Australian film festival
Thursday, August 6, 2009

AFP - Thursday, August 6TAIPEI (AFP) - - Taiwan's Beijing-friendly government on Wednesday denied boycotting an Australian film festival amid a row over the e

Merkel's support dips, regional ally resigns International
Thursday, September 3, 2009

By Sarah Marsh and Noah Barkin

BERLIN (Reuters) - Chancellor Angela Merkel suffered a double blow on Thursday as a senior party ally in east German

Minister seeks closure of anti-Berlusconi websites
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
ROME (AFP) - – The Italian government moved Tuesday to close down Internet sites encouraging further violence against Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who

Asian markets mixed after Wall Street rally
Wednesday, March 18, 2009

By ELAINE KURTENBACH,AP Business Writer AP - Wednesday, March 18SHANGHAI - Asia's stock market rally seemed to be running out of steam Wednesday, despite an

S. Korea wins $1.8 major order for container ships | 21 February 2011
Greece vows action on debt under peer pressure | | 9 December 2009
Obama: no safe haven for terrorists in Afghanistan | 10 February 2009

Online ad spend overtakes newspapers: eMarketer | 21 December 2010

Forum Views () Forum Replies ()

Read more with google mobile : Robo-readers: the new teachers' helper in the U.S. |

Edition: U.S. Africa Arabic Argentina Brazil Canada China France Germany India Italy Japan Latin America Mexico Russia Spain United Kingdom Home Business Business Home Economy Technology Media Small Business Legal Deals Earnings Social Pulse Business Video The Freeland File Markets Markets Home U.S. Markets European Markets Asian Markets Global Market Data Indices M&A Stocks Bonds Currencies Commodities Futures Funds peHUB World World Home U.S. Brazil China Euro Zone Japan Mexico Russia India Insight World Video Reuters Investigates Decoder Politics Politics Home Election 2012 Issues 2012 Candidates 2012 Tales from the Trail Political Punchlines Supreme Court Politics Video Tech Technology Home MediaFile Science Tech Video Tech Tonic Social Pulse Opinion Opinion Home Chrystia Freeland John Lloyd Felix Salmon Jack Shafer David Rohde Bernd Debusmann Nader Mousavizadeh Lucy P. Marcus David Cay Johnston Bethany McLean Edward Hadas Hugo Dixon Ian Bremmer Lawrence Summers Susan Glasser The Great Debate Steven Brill Jack & Suzy Welch Breakingviews Equities Credit Private Equity M&A Macro & Markets Politics Breakingviews Video Money Money Home Tax Break Lipper Awards 2012 Global Investing MuniLand Unstructured Finance Linda Stern Mark Miller John Wasik James Saft Analyst Research Alerts Watchlist Portfolio Stock Screener Fund Screener Personal Finance Video Money Clip Investing 201 Life Health Sports Arts Faithworld Business Traveler Entertainment Oddly Enough Lifestyle Video Pictures Pictures Home Reuters Photographers Full Focus Video Reuters TV Reuters News Article Comments (1) Slideshow Counterparties: Today's Best Links The gambler who broke Atlantic City Don Johnson used relatively tiny advantages to win $6 million from an Atlantic City casino in one night. It wasn't the first such haul for Johnson. Here's how he did it. Read more at Counterparties Dallas Fed: Break up big banks Private equity's bigges threat is itself Follow Reuters Facebook Twitter RSS YouTube Read New high in U.S. autism rates inspires renewed debate 1:46pm EDT Urine-soaked eggs a spring taste treat in China city | 11:40am EDT Exclusive: Brazil to rally BRICS against rich countries 28 Mar 2012 Exclusive: U.S. sees lifetime cost of F-35 fighter at $1.45 trillion 1:28am EDT Pentagon sees mass layoffs if budget cuts prevail 4:08pm EDT Discussed 248 Poll: Americans angry with Obama over gas prices 224 Cheney recovering after heart transplant: spokeswoman 218 Black friend defends shooter of Florida teen Watched Congressman dons a hoodie, gets kicked off House floor Wed, Mar 28 2012 Horror hits the runway in Japan Fri, Mar 23 2012 Elephant runs away from circus 12:16am EDT Robo-readers: the new teachers' helper in the U.S. Tweet Share this Email Print Related News Insight: Public schools sell empty classroom seats abroad Thu, Mar 8 2012 Suspect told police he killed randomly in Ohio school Wed, Feb 29 2012 Analysis & Opinion Ultra-religious schools test Israel’s high-tech future Jim Yong Kim and Dartmouth’s culture of sexual assault Related Topics U.S. » Tech » Lifestyle » 1 of 2. An artist's impression shows a fictional robo-teacher. American high school students are terrible writers, and one education reform group thinks it has an answer: robots. Or, more accurately, robo-readers - computers programmed to scan student essays and spit out a grade. Credit: Reuters/Brice Hall By Stephanie Simon Thu Mar 29, 2012 5:21pm EDT (Reuters) - American high school students are terrible writers, and one education reform group thinks it has an answer: robots. Or, more accurately, robo-readers - computers programmed to scan student essays and spit out a grade. The theory is that teachers would assign more writing if they didn't have to read it. And the more writing students do, the better at it they'll become - even if the primary audience for their prose is a string of algorithms. That sounds logical to Mark Shermis, dean of the College of Education at the University of Akron. He's helping to supervise a contest, set up by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, that promises $100,000 in prize money to programmers who write the best automated grading software. "If you're a high school teacher and you give a writing assignment, you're walking home with 150 essays," Shermis said. "You're going to need some help." But help from a robo-reader? "Wow," said Thomas Jehn, director of the Harvard College Writing Program. He paused a moment. "It's horrifying," he said at last. Automated essay grading was first proposed in the 1960s, but computers back then were not up to the task. In the late 1990s, as technology improved, several textbook and testing companies jumped into the field. Today, computers are used to grade essays on South Dakota's student writing assessments and a handful of other high-stakes exams, including the TOEFL test of English fluency, taken by foreign students. But machines do not grade essays on either the SAT or the ACT, the two primary college entrance exams. And American teachers by and large have been reluctant to turn their students' homework assignments over to robo-graders. The Hewlett contest aims to change that by demonstrating that computers can grade as perceptively as English teachers - only much more quickly and without all that depressing red ink. Automated essay scoring is "nonjudgmental," Shermis said. "And it can be done 24/7. If students finish an essay at 10 p.m., they get feedback at 10:01." Take, for instance, the Intelligent Essay Assessor, a web-based tool marketed by Pearson Education, Inc. Within seconds, it can analyze an essay for spelling, grammar, organization and other traits and prompt students to make revisions. The program scans for key words and analyzes semantic patterns, and Pearson boasts it "can 'understand' the meaning of text much the same as a human reader." Jehn, the Harvard writing instructor, isn't so sure. He argues that the best way to teach good writing is to help students wrestle with ideas; misspellings and syntax errors in early drafts should be ignored in favor of talking through the thesis. "Try to find the idea that's percolating," he said. "Then start looking for whether the commas are in the right place." No computer, he said, can do that. What's more, Jehn said he worries that students will give up striving to craft a beautiful metaphor or insightful analogy if they know their essays will not be read, but scanned for a split second by a computer program. "I like to know I'm writing for a real flesh-and-blood reader who is excited by the words on the page," Jehn said. "I'm sure children feel the same way." Even supporters of robo-grading acknowledge its limitations. A prankster could outwit many scoring programs by jumbling key phrases in a nonsensical order. An essay about Christopher Columbus might ramble on about Queen Isabella sailing with 1492 soldiers to the Island of Ferdinand -- and still be rated as solidly on topic, Shermis said. Computers also have a hard time dealing with experimental prose. They favor conformity over creativity. "They hate poetry," said David Williamson, senior research director at the nonprofit Educational Testing Service, which received a patent in late 2010 for an Automatic Essay Scoring System. But Williamson argues that automated graders aren't meant to identify the next James Joyce. They don't judge artistic merit; they measure how effectively a writer communicates basic ideas. That's a skill many U.S. students lack. Just one in four high-school seniors was rated proficient on the most recent national writing assessment. The Hewlett Foundation kicked off its robo-grading contest by testing several programs already on the market. Results won't be released for several weeks, but Hewlett officials said they did very well. Hewlett then challenged amateurs to come up with their own algorithms. The contest, hosted on the data science website Kaggle.com, has drawn hundreds of competitors from all walks of life. They have until April 30 to write programs that will judge essays studded with awkward phrases such as, "I slouch my bag on to my shoulder" or "When I got my stitches some parts hurted." The goal is to get the computer to give each essay the same score a human grader would. Martin O'Leary, a glacier scientist at the University of Michigan, has been working on the contest for weeks. Poring over thousands of sample essays, he discovered that human graders generally don't give students extra points for using sophisticated vocabulary. So he scrapped plans to have his computer scan the essays for rare words. Instead, he has his robo-grader count punctuation marks. "The number of commas is a very strong predictor of score," O'Leary said. "It's kind of weird. But the more, the better." As he digs into the data, O'Leary has run into a dismaying truth: The human graders he's trying to match are inconsistent. They disagree with one another on the merits of a given essay. They award scores that seem random. Indeed, studies have shown that human readers are influenced by factors that should be irrelevant, such as how neatly a student writes. "The reality is, humans are not very good at doing this," said Steve Graham, a Vanderbilt University professor who has researched essay grading techniques. "It's inevitable," he said, that robo-graders will soon take over. O'Leary won't mind when that day comes. He tests his program against student prose that has already been graded by a teacher. When the scores diverge, O'Leary reads the essay to find out why. "More often than not," he said, "I agree with the computer." (Editing by Jonathan Weber and Philip Barbara) U.S. Tech Lifestyle Tweet this Link this Share this Digg this Email Reprints We welcome comments that advance the story through relevant opinion, anecdotes, links and data. If you see a comment that you believe is irrelevant or inappropriate, you can flag it to our editors by using the report abuse links. Views expressed in the comments do not represent those of Reuters. For more information on our comment policy, see http://blogs.reuters.com/fulldisclosure/2010/09/27/toward-a-more-thoughtful-conversation-on-stories/ Comments (1) mrtcbear wrote: Edition: U.S. Africa Arabic Argentina Brazil Canada China France Germany India Italy Japan Latin America Mexico Russia Spain United Kingdom Back to top Reuters.com Business Markets World Politics Technology Opinion Money Pictures Videos Site Index Legal Bankruptcy Law California Legal New York Legal Securities Law Support & Contact Support Corrections Connect with Reuters Twitter Facebook LinkedIn RSS Podcast Newsletters Mobile About Privacy Policy Terms of Use AdChoices Copyright Our Flagship financial information platform incorporating Reuters Insider An ultra-low latency infrastructure for electronic trading and data distribution A connected approach to governance, risk and compliance Our next generation legal research platform Our global tax workstation Thomsonreuters.com About Thomson Reuters Investor Relations Careers Contact Us Thomson Reuters is the world's largest international multimedia news agency, providing investing news, world news, business news, technology news, headline news, small business news, news alerts, personal finance, stock market, and mutual funds information available on Reuters.com, video, mobile, and interactive television platforms. Thomson Reuters journalists are subject to an Editorial Handbook which requires fair presentation and disclosure of relevant interests. NYSE and AMEX quotes delayed by at least 20 minutes. Nasdaq delayed by at least 15 minutes. For a complete list of exchanges and delays, please click here.

Other News on Friday, 30 March 2012
Analysis: Springtime in Cuba? |
Intrigue, treachery charges fly in fight for U.N. post |
Chavez back in Venezuela after radiation therapy |
France bars four more Islamic preachers from entry |
Two men torch themselves in Italy as hardship bites |
Iran suspends accreditation for
Analysis: Drug gang menace overshadows Mexican election |
Apple, Foxconn pledge to revamp worker conditions |
BlackBerry maker posts loss; some executives exit |
Analysis: U.S. Jobs Act could help the least flashy startups |
Star-struck Japan PM befriends Facebook's Zuckerberg |
Eircom applies for court protection over $5 billion debt |
More clean tech IPOs come to market, amid skepticism |
LivingSocial drops Instant for food order service |
Avaya IPO faces long wait amid Facebook mania |
Robo-readers: the new teachers' helper in the U.S. |
The fairy tale life of Mirror Mirror star Lily Collins |
Smiles and a warning as Lindsay Lohan ends probation |
U.S. may accept less stringent controls for Taliban detainees |
Dozens of Taliban killed in fighting in west Afghanistan |
French police swoop on suspected Islamists |
Israel cordons off West Bank over Land Day threat |
Mexican presidential favorite vows to restore peace |
North Korea test fires short-range missiles: reports |
Islamist draws crowds in Egypt election campaign |
Italy's Monti seeks to defuse row over party remarks |
Poverty, frustration keep Macedonia tensions alive |
Japan government to submit tax hike plan, heads into political showdown |
Apple, Foxconn set new standard for China work conditions |
Murdoch's media empire strikes back |
China's Alibaba tests social shopping with Pinterest clone |
RIM posts loss as new CEO begins to clean house |
Verizon plans wireless video service: WSJ |
More U.S. clean tech IPOs come to market, amid skepticism |
Micron settles memory chip lawsuit with Oracle |
Google to open online tablet store: report |
Florence + The Machine get Unplugged for MTV |
Heejun Han voted off American Idol, eight remain |
Smiles and a warning as Lindsay Lohan ends probation |
Author Shriver looks at terrorism with droll humor |
Exclusive: Iran helps Syria ship oil to China: sources |
Exclusive: China Communist Party scandal triggered by British man's death: source |
Former Soviet KGB spy chief commits suicide |
Clinton meets Saudi king amid Syria, Iran tensions |
New Iran talks may focus on higher-grade atom work |
Mexican presidential favorite vows to restore peace |
In Myanmar, voters prepare for clash of symbols |
Japan to lift entry ban on some Fukushima cities |
Syrian army must pull back first under Annan plan |
Apple supplier Foxconn cuts working hours, workers ask why |
Disney, Japan's DeNA to jointly develop mobile games |
Harry Potter tour focuses on behind-camera wizardry |
Harry Potter and the strange case of Oscars snub |
Beatles musical planned for 50th year of debut song |
Greece at new risk of being pushed off euro
Bodies of missing Tenn. mom, Jo Ann Bain, and daughter found
Female Breasts Are Bigger Than Ever
AMD Trinity Accelerated Processing Units Now in Volume Production
The Avengers (2012 film), made the second biggest opening- and single-day gross of all-time
AMD to Start Production of piledriver
Ivy Bridge Quad-Core, Four-Thread Desktop CPUs
Islamists Protest Lady Gaga's Concert in Indonesia
Japan Successfully Broadcasts an 8K Signal Over the Air
ECB boosts loans to 1 trillion Euro to stop credit crunch
Egypt : Mohammed Morsi won with 52 percent
What do you call 100,000 Frenchmen with their hands up
AMD Launches AMD Embedded R-Series APU Platform
Fed Should not Ignore Emerging Market Crisis
Fed casts shadow over India, emerging markets
Why are Chinese tourists so rude? A few insights

USD EUR - 1 year graph		BlogMeter 1.01