Today's New York Times brings more bad news for professors: an automated grading system that evidently does a pretty good job of grading short answers--and does so almost instantaneously rather than taking a week or more. The hope is that such technology will free faculty up for other duties. Of course those "other duties" will often entail looking for a new job. With undergraduate tuition continuing its ever-upward spiral, cutting labor costs is, understandably, a primary goal for administrators. If technology can deliver outstanding online lectures and reliable assessment tools, then won't we simply need fewer professors?
The article notes that there are many skeptics--but also that most of the skeptics come from elite universities at which undergraduates receive a lot of individual care. It seems to me that for the rest of us survival depends on providing students with the sort of attention that is too often missing at many universities. If we believe that we can't be replaced by software programs and canned lectures, the onus is on us (no pun intended) to prove it. The millions of students confronting murky employment possibilities and massive debts are soon going to be voting with their feet--and mouses.
Link to the story
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