How to Use AI to Improve Your Grading and Assessment

Welcome to AutomatED: the newsletter on how to teach better with tech.

Each week, I share what I have learned — and am learning — about AI and tech in the university classroom. What works, what doesn't, and why.

Let’s discuss how to use AI tools to accelerate and improve your grading and assessment.

As I noted in my very first piece, no professor spends the majority of their time in the classroom. Rather, in addition to working on our research, we are working on other tasks, such as:

• preparing to teach,

• meeting with students,

• grading, and

• doing administrative work.

My focus in the first piece was on AI-enhanced voice recording, transcription, and analysis tools, like Fireflies.ai. These tools can level up your student meetings by helping you provide more personalized instruction and feedback to your students, as well as by helping you keep track of student needs after the meetings have ended.

Today, my focus is on how you can use AI tools to assess, constructively critique, and grade student submissions. There are few assignments where AI tools can or should completely replace you, the professor, but this does not mean that you should not be looking for ways they can save you time and improve your pedagogy.

I know I do not need to convince this readership of the value of reducing time on assessment while improving its impact…