Essay-grading system expands at Missouri

By Lee Zucker
April 22, 2008

In fall of 2003, MU sociology professor Edward Brent asked his students an extra credit question in a manner previously unknown to students and professors.

He instructed his students to read the question online, respond to that question online and then submit it. Brent would never see the students' responses -- only the results.

Qualrus, Brent's qualitative analysis program, graded the student essays automatically and provided them with feedback within minutes of turning in the assignment.

The program, now called SAGrader, has expanded since Brent's fall 2003 class and has reached universities across the country, including American University, Boise State University and other MU departments.

With five sections currently utilizing the essay grading system in two different departments at MU, Brent hopes his program will grow to expand the opportunity for those students and professors forced to rely solely on multiple-choice exams for grading.

While SAgrader alleviates the focus on multiple-choice exams in a class, it fails to provide personalized writing feedback on individual ideas, organization or sentence structure, freshman Alex Meyer said.

Meyer used SAGrader in an introductory sociology class last semester.

"I don't feel like I learned much at all," Meyer said. "Part of college is having comprehensive writing, but I feel like that's not really conducive to writing when you have to break down your writing to the bare minimum and give very simple responses."

There are two types of essay grading programs -- one on content and one on punctuation and style. SAGrader is designed to focus on content, which is more concerned with whether the student learned a certain content area and linking concepts together rather than writing a paper with proper grammar and insightful analysis, Brent said.

Meyer argued that SAGrader provides no interaction between the instructor and student.

While Brent agrees that's a fair criticism, he said challenging a response gives a chance for that interaction, which would not occur if the class consisted only of multiple-choice exams.

Students can opt to challenge the grade and feedback SAGrader provided. If that submission is reviewed and the student was correct, the program is altered and every student's essay is re-graded so all students benefit from one challenge.

Freshman Curtis Atkisson uses SAGrader in Brent's class but also works as a grant writer for the SAGrader program.

"The degree of teacher-student interaction is really dependent upon the openness of the teacher and the willingness of the student to take advantage of that openness," Atkisson said.

Brent said that he had been teaching for 15 years, and that before he created SAGrader, he could only give three multiple-choice exams each semester. He said the program allows him to use different types of assignments, and the research shows the program has been successful.

"I think the really important thing is that SAGrader gives people a chance to learn who didn't know at first, but are willing to work," Brent said. "When you give students a chance and feedback, then they learn."

Brent wanted to show the overall improvement in student learning through SAGrader, so he developed a midterm with half of the questions discussed topics covered in SAGrader assignments and the other half discussed in class and readings. Students scored 20 percent better on the questions included in their assigned essays than on those concepts not discussed in SAGrader.