Can ChatGPT Help Me Grade?

Generative AI tools are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and some instructors are beginning to use them to assist with grading. These tools can be used to help instructors identify plagiarism, provide feedback, and even grade essays.

If you choose to use generative AI tools to assist with grading, you should tell your students you are doing that. This is important because students have a right to know how their work is being evaluated, and any information that is put into free GenAI tools could be used to train it. It is also important to be transparent about the limitations of these tools. Generative AI tools are not perfect, and they can sometimes make mistakes.

How Generative AI Tools Can Be Used for Grading

There are a number of ways that generative AI tools can be used for grading. Here are a few examples:

  • Identifying plagiarism: Generative AI tools can be used to identify plagiarism by comparing student work to a large database of existing content. This can help instructors to quickly and easily identify any instances of plagiarism.
  • Providing feedback: Generative AI tools can be used to provide feedback on student work. These tools can identify areas where students need improvement, and they can also generate suggestions for how students can improve their work.
  • Grading essays: Generative AI tools can be used to grade essays. These tools can read and understand student essays, and they can then generate a grade for the essay.

The Limitations of Generative AI Tools

Generative AI tools are not perfect, and they have a number of limitations. Here are a few examples:

  • These tools can sometimes make mistakes. For example, they may incorrectly identify plagiarism or provide inaccurate feedback.
  • These tools are not always able to understand the nuances of human language. This can lead to them generating feedback that is not helpful or accurate.
  • These tools did not attend class and are not the professor. In the end, only the instructor of record can assign and record students' final grades in their class. If that final grade is based only on AI-generated assignment scores, the instructor may not have engaged with each student's work closely enough to feel confident submitting a final grade.  

Regardless whether you decide to use these tools to assist in grading, you have an obligation to remain engaged with your students as their instructor, to monitor their progress, and to help them succeed.

The content on this page was created using assistance from ChatGPT.