Wow this is pretty shocking. I can understand using automated systems for something like math problems, it makes sense. There’s (usually) one right answer. But essays? This should be banned.
Note: This is not hyperbole, I have seen this exact scenario more than once.
There may be a place for a well-designed one, but if it exists, I've never seen it.
if only the last one is not required of the scoring system, then it's been available for ages, and its just a really poor implementation. That's not programming but plumbing data-pipes.
Having an ignorant teacher is almost as bad as a flawed, black-box algorithm.
Math is only not commutative in very rare areas. A specific area is concatenation of 2 strings, or 2 rotations of a rubiks cube.
> said it was impossible to calculate the exact area under a curve
And this is why a lot of people are against unions and similar protections for teachers. How do you get rid of someone who blatantly lies and informs falsely to students? How do you get rid of horrible teachers?
It would mark you as incorrect for using too many decimal places, even though it wouldn't tell you how many significant figures was required. I often remember it marking my answer as incorrect, even though it was identical to the answer they gave. Sometimes you'd have to show your working, but it couldn't handle brackets. Once I put the answer as "1+x=y" but they wanted the answer "y-1=x", and they marked it as incorrect.
I'm sure academic software design is leaps and bounds above what it was in the early 2000's, but to have a pupils futures hinge on what generally seems to be poorly tested code is dangerous.
It's also a bundle with the book sold by unis, because the code 'allows' you to submit homework required for the class. So they're doing both resale prevention, AND horrible grading.
People I know who have to interact with it call it "My Meth Lab" - because you have to be high to like it.
The state chose fast and cheap. Well, its cheaper than more teachers.
But even with these examples, the path of appeal and rectification of mistakes is much easier with all humans involved. I fear soon people will side with the machine out of ignorance or to be justified in an incorrect stance.
The idea that we could be so poorly taught by broken automated systems, that we become incapable of detecting the system is broken seems like a possibility with AI that is much less likely in pure human systems of education (though not impossible).