
Teachers are using AI to grade essays. But some experts are raising ethical concerns
CNN
teaching ChatGPT best practices in her writing workshop class at the University of Lynchburg in Virginia, said she sees the advantages for teachers using AI tools but takes issue with how it can be used to create feedback for students.
When Diane Gayeski, a professor of strategic communications at Ithaca College, receives an essay from one of her students, she runs part of it through ChatGPT, asking the AI tool to critique and suggest how to improve the work. “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,” she told CNN. She shows her students the feedback from ChatGPT and how the tool rewrote their essay. “I’ll share what I think about their intro, too, and we’ll talk about it,” she said. Gayeski requires her class of 15 students to do the same: run their draft through ChatGPT to see where they can make improvements. The emergence of AI is reshaping education, presenting real benefits, such as automating some tasks to free up time for more personalized instruction, but also some big hazards, from issues around accuracy and plagiarism to maintaining integrity. Both teachers and students are using the new technology. A report by strategy consultant firm Tyton Partners, sponsored by plagiarism detection 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.