BYU is piloting Writegrader, an artificial intelligence grading tool designed to grade student writing and deliver instant feedback. The technology is being rolled out this semester in the Management Communication (M COM 320) course in the Marriott School of Business.
Liz Dixon, associate professor of management communication, said the tool will be used in both fall and winter semesters as part of a pilot study.
“The students are going to have a different experience depending on who their professor is in class, but more of an equalized experience grading-wise,” Dixon said.
M COM 320 is an advanced writing class with 43 sections this fall, making grading consistency difficult. The class is open to all majors, not just business students.
WriteGrader was developed by Randy Davies, a BYU professor of instructional psychology, and Michael Murff, who worked on the project as a BYU Ph.D. student in measurement and evaluation before graduating.
The tool works so that professors can upload their assignment rubrics, the system grades and provides feedback within minutes.
“Our goal is to give teachers a tool that removes the tedium of grading,” Davies said. “That way they can spend more time building relationships with students, going over feedback and not feeling frustrated and tired.”
Waiting weeks for essay feedback isn’t ideal, Davies said. By then, students have often moved on to other assignments. Writegrader delivers real-time feedback.
All M COM professors must use the tool this semester, both to ensure grading consistency and to help the development team gather data. Dixon said an Institutional Review Board has already reviewed the project and gave “fantastic feedback.”
The first pilot and soft launch took place more than a year ago. WriteGrader is reported to be 95% accurate and sometimes even stricter than professors. Dixon said instructors can and should adjust grades and add comments as needed.
Lisa Thomas, adjunct professor of management communication and faculty advisor for the Student AI in Business Society, said she is enthusiastic about AI's potential to help students improve, but also sees the risks.
“The idea is not that this WriteGrader tool will be the only feedback students get,” Thomas said. “That would be very bad. We look at the AI feedback, tweak it and add our own.”
“The feedback we’ve gotten from students is that they truly appreciate it,” Davies said. “They get good feedback and can start applying it.”
Dixon said removing the burden of grading allows professors to focus on what matters most at BYU.
“It frees up professors to develop those relationships that I believe help keep students on the covenant path,” she said.
AI can be a helpful tool for both teachers and students in the learning process. Thomas said it's valuable for students to be able to use AI in their classwork as well.
"The workplace will require people to speak intelligently about their work, regardless of how it was created," she said. “If a report was written with AI, but you can explain it and speak about it intelligently, it doesn’t matter who wrote it. So we’re ramping up the oral presentation portion of M COM 320.”
Thomas said AI grading works if students are doing the real work. Otherwise, you get AI grading AI, which undermines both the class and the tool.
“It’s easy to block progress because you see risk,” Thomas said. “But we want students to learn to use AI ethically and strategically.”
On day one of a new job, she said, students will likely be expected to use AI to produce better work faster. That means it is important to raise the bar for assignments and build foundational writing skills early.
Davies believes this type of technology will one day be standard in classrooms everywhere.
“It’s a disruptive innovation,” he said. “It will slowly take over, and people who resist it will resist in vain because there are so many benefits, if it’s done well.”
Dixon said the Marriott School hopes to eventually expand the program.
“We’re confident that it’ll do a good job and that we will see good results, but we will be testing it and collecting that data moving forward," she said. "We hope to be able to share it at some point with other colleges.”