Here's a little pop quiz. Multiple-choice tests are useful because: A: They're cheap to score. B: They can be scored quickly. C: They score without human bias. D: All of the above. It would take a computer about a nano-second to mark "D" as the correct answer. That's easy. But now, machines are also grading students' essays. Computers are scoring long form answers on anything from the fall of the Roman Empire, to the pros and cons of government regulations. Developers of so-called "robo-graders" say they understand why many students and teachers would be skeptical of the idea. But they insist, with computers already doing jobs as complicated and as fraught as driving cars, detecting cancer, and carrying on conversations, they can certainly handle grading students' essays. "I've been working on this now for about 25 years, and I feel that ... the time is right and it's really starting to be used now," says Peter Foltz, a research professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He's
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