Automated essay scoring (AES) is employed in various contexts and applications. AES systems utilise artificial intelligence and natural language processing techniques to evaluate and grade essays without human intervention. Though it’s widely adopted across diverse educational scenarios, its most prevalent use is in educational testing. AES leverages machine learning methods to classify, score, or rank essays.
In 2018, the introduction of AES was proposed for the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) in Australia. The deployment of AES sparked significant controversy within the Australian school sector, leading to its suspension for marking online writing tests. Currently, automated scoring is only routinely used for certain aspects of NAPLAN. Concerns raised by teachers, teachers’ unions, principals, and parents encompassed the de-professionalisation of teachers, inconsistent infrastructure across Australian schools, an absence of regulation or guidelines regarding recourse options and challenging automated scores in high-stakes testing, and a lack of transparency from examination authorities (Kalervo et al., 2022). Other instances of AES in action include standardised tests like the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) and the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL).
