Automatic essay assessment: Effects on students’ acceptance and on learning-related characteristics

Abstract

When capacity constraints hinder university instructors? ability to give feedback, software tools might provide a remedy. We analyzed students? acceptance of automatic assessments and the development of learning-related characteristics such as motivation, achievement aspirations, and subjective learning. We randomly assigned university students to four groups that differed with regard to the real and assumed source of assessment of students? texts (i.e., teaching assistant or software tool). Data from N = 300 students were analyzed. Assessments were less accepted when presumably coming from the software tool. Students mostly preferred human graders over computers in teaching in general, but this preference was weakened for some situations when students assumed they were being assessed by the software tool. Nevertheless, students saw some general merits to assessment by computers, and the development of learning-related characteristics was not affected by the real or assumed source of assessment. Thus, combining feedback from software tools and human graders seems to be a feasible way to expand feedback capacities in higher education.