eSchool News is counting down the 10 most-read stories of 2025. Story # 8 focuses on the debate around instructors vs. AI. Key points:
An associate of ours just recently attended an AI training where the opening slide included a list of all the methods AI can transform our class. Grading was listed at the top. Sure, AI can grade documents in mere seconds, but should it?
As one of our trainees, Jane, mentioned: “It has a rubric and can quantify it. It has standards. But that is not what actually enters into composing.” Our trainees acknowledge that AI can not replace the empathy and deep understanding that recognizes the development, effort, and advancement of their voice. What concerns us most about grading our trainees’ written deal with AI is the improvement of their audience from human to robotic.
If we teach our students throughout their composing lives that what the grading robotic states matters most, then we are teaching them that their audience does not matter. As Wyatt, another student, put it: “If you can use AI to grade me, I can use AI to write.” NCTE, in its position statements for Generative AI, advises us that composing is a human act, not a mechanical one. Decreasing it to automated ratings weakens its worth and teaches students, like Wyatt and Jane, that the only time we write is for a grade. That is a future of teaching composing we wish to never see.
We require to stop briefly when tech business promote AI as the grader of trainee writing. This isn’t a concern of ability. AI can score essays. It can be adjusted to rubrics. It can, as Jane said, supply trainees with support and feedback specific to their establishing skills. And we have no doubt it has the potential to make a teacher’s grading life much easier. However just because we can outsource some instructional functions to innovation does not suggest we should.
It is bad enough how many students already see their instructor as their only audience. Or even worse, when students are composing for teachers who see their composed work strictly through the lens of a rubric, their audience is limited to the rubric. Even those options are much better than composing for a bot. Rather, let’s concern how frequently our trainees write to a broader audience of their peers, moms and dads, community, or a panel of judges for a writing contest. We need to reengage with composing as a procedure and carry out AI as a guide or assistant rather than a judge with the last word on an essay rating.
Our finest foot forward is to put AI in its location. Using AI in the composing procedure is much better served in the developing stages of composing. AI is outstanding as a guide for conceptualizing. It can assist in a range of methods when a student is struggling and trying to find 5 options to their current ending or a concept for a metaphor. And if you or your students like AI’s grading feature, they can paste their work into a bot for feedback prior to handing it in as a final draft.
We require to acknowledge that there are grave effects if we let a bot do all the grading. As teachers, we should acknowledge bot grading for what it is: automated education. We can and must leave the guarantees of numerous essays graded in an hour for the standardized test suppliers. Our classrooms are alive with people who have stories to inform, arguments to make, and research study to conduct. We see our trainees beyond the raw information of their work. We acknowledge that the poem our student has actually written for their ill grandparent may be a little flawed, however it matters a lot to the person composing it and to the person they are composing it for. We see the enjoyment or determination in our students’ eyes when they’ve picked a research topic that is very important to them. They desire their cause to be known and comprehended by others, not processed and graded by a bot.
The adoption of AI into education need to be performed with care. Numerous educators are try out using AI tools in thoughtful and student-centered ways. In a recent article, David Cutler explains his experience utilizing an AI-assisted platform to supply feedback on his students’ essays. While Cutler found the tool remarkably precise and useful, the true value lies in the feedback being utilized as part of the revision procedure. As this short article reinforces, the function of an instructor is not just to grade, however to support and assist learning. When utilized purposefully (and we highlight, as in-process feedback) AI can improve that learning, however the final word, and the relationship behind it, need to still come from a human.
When we hand over grading to AI, we run the risk of handing over something much larger– our students’ belief that their words matter and should have an audience. Our trainees do not compose to impress a rubric, they write to be heard. And when we change the reader with a robot, we risk teaching our trainees that their voices just matter to the maker. We need to let AI support the composing process, not specify the product. Let it provide concepts, not provide grades. When we utilize it at the best moments and for the ideal reasons, it can make us better instructors and help our trainees grow. However let’s never puzzle efficiency with compassion. Or algorithms with understanding.