Josie Kwan has been an English teacher at William H. Smith High School for seven years. After giving birth to twins last April and enjoying a blissful (yet exhausting) summer, she’s finally returning to work this September. A passionate educator, she worries that her new life as a parent will make it a lot tougher to grade her student’s work. With 2 a.m. feedings replacing late night grading sessions, she yearns for a new way to serve the needs of her classes without sacrificing the consistent attention to detail that she prides herself on.
Ms. James Campbell is the senior superintendent of the Halliwell School District. Now entering his 24th year working with the Board of Education, his old-school sensibilities have driven his approach to the job. He believes his administration should maintain a tried-and-true teaching and evaluation methods that have served them so well for over two decades.
Over the past few years, Mr. Campbell has started to become aware of challenges that both his students and teachers are facing. Teachers like Ms. Kwan have been struggling to keep up with their scoring workload. Students like Josh aren’t consistently reaching their true potential as writers. Mr. Campbell began to think that maybe it’s time for a change.
Making the Move to Intellimetric
After completing a great deal of research, Mr. Campbell and the school administration made an important decision that they hoped would alleviate many of these issues. They decided to finally retire the practice of human essay scoring in favor of a leading automated scoring tool called Intellimetric to evaluate essays throughout the school year.
Since September, all of the school district’s written assignments have been scored by this software. Since the process has gotten so much quicker, Josh’s assignments have been returned to him much more quickly, allowing him to review feedback while the work is still fresh in his mind. Corrections and comments are consistent and easy to understand, so Josh has been able to more easily learn from them. By being provided with such a deep level of expertise, Josh isn’t just identifying mistakes… he’s becoming a very good writer in the process.
Ms. Kwan’s return to teaching has been much smoother than she expected, thanks to Intellimetric. Instead of burning the midnight oil reading essays, she can rest easy knowing that students like Josh are receiving quality scoring that will help them learn and improve as writers. While her life may have gotten busier this year, Intellimetric allows her to teach with the same passion and energy that she started with seven years ago.
Mr. Campbell has been busier this year as well. Since implementing Intellimetric into his administration, he’s been reaching out to teachers, fellow administrators, students and their parents for feedback. Each day, his inbox is filled with responses confirming what his research told him all along: switching to an automated essay grading service like Intellimetric is helping students learn while giving teachers a better quality of life. He is happy with his decision, knowing that this beneficial solution will serve the school system well for decades to come.
Our next blog will discuss the various factors that an automated essay scorer takes into consideration when creating feedback on an essay.