What others say about auto grading
eSelf AI: "Automated Grading Systems: A Smart Choice for Educators?"
URL: https://www.eself.ai/blog/automated-grading-systems-a-smart-choice-for-educators/
Key Highlights:
What used to take hours or even days can now be wrapped up in just a few seconds eSelf AI
Automated grading eliminates human bias by consistently applying the same criteria across all assessments eSelf AI
Natural Language Processing helps systems understand written answers by really getting what the student is trying to say eSelf AI
OCR (Optical Character Recognition) reads handwriting and turns it into text that computers can work with eSelf AI
GitHub Blog: "Improve Student Success and Increase Teacher Time with Autograding"
URL: https://github.blog/2020-03-17-improve-student-success-and-increase-teacher-time-with-autograding/
Key Highlights:
Professor Dan Wallach estimated that autograding tools improved student grades by 20 percent in his course GitHub
Students can "continue pushing until they reach the metrics they want" when they can see grade metrics GitHub
"The computer just says pass or fail," Wallach explained, "and that's an opportunity for students to not feel bad about it when they know everyone has the same challenge" GitHub
Autograding helps limit bias and keeps grading "as objective as possible"
Stukent: "Upgrade Your Grade Book: How Auto-Graded Features Support Teaching and Learning"
Key Highlights:
Immediate feedback reinforces students' mental models, accelerating the learning cycle and helping students retain information Stukent
Timely feedback provides students with a sense of accomplishment, which encourages effort, engagement, and sustained learning Stukent
Delayed feedback may cause students uncertainty and anxiety, as they may not know if they're on the right track with new material Stukent
Auto-grading gives instructors up-to-date insights into student performance, allowing them to tailor their lectures to students' needs
Digiexam: "Save Time with an Automatic Grading System"
URL: https://www.digiexam.com/blog/automatic-grading-system-benefits-education
Key Highlights:
Research strongly indicates that feedback is most impactful when students' recollection of their task is still vivid Digiexam
One study found that learners receiving immediate feedback showed consistently better retention and a more positive learning curve over time Digiexam
Automatic grading systems ensure that every response is evaluated consistently against the same criteria, minimizing the risk of errors Digiexam
Teachers can customize grading rules, such as setting partial credit, adjusting weightage, or creating automated scoring rubrics
Princeton Review: "The Evolution of Education: How AI is Reshaping Grading"
URL: https://www.princetonreview.com/ai-education/how-ai-is-reshaping-grading
Key Highlights:
Human graders frequently bring their own subjectivity and biases into the equation, including personal preferences, mood, and unconscious prejudices The Princeton Review
Conventional grading procedures frequently leave little room for giving students thorough feedback The Princeton Review
The true power of AI grading lies in its ability to provide personalized feedback to individual students by identifying areas of strength and weakness The Princeton Review
Even as AI develops, educators are still essential—they offer emotional support, context, and advice that go beyond technology
How AutoGrading Gave Me Back My Evenings—And My Students
A teacher's story about rediscovering why she fell in love with teaching
By Sarah Mitchell, 4th Grade Math Teacher | Lincoln Elementary School
There's a moment every teacher knows too well.
It's 7:43 PM on a Tuesday. You're sitting at the kitchen table, surrounded by a stack of 28 math assessments. Your coffee went cold an hour ago. Your own kids finished dinner without you—again. And somewhere between problem 12 and problem 13, you realize you've written "Good effort!" for the fifteenth time because your brain simply can't form original thoughts anymore.
That was me, every week, for eleven years.
I didn't become a teacher to grade papers. I became a teacher because of Marcus.
The Student I Almost Missed
Marcus was a quiet kid in my third-period class two years ago. He sat in the back, turned in his work on time, and scored somewhere in the middle on every assessment. He was easy to overlook—not struggling enough to flag, not excelling enough to celebrate.
One Thursday afternoon, I was rushing through a stack of fraction assessments during my lunch break. I had exactly 22 minutes before my next class. Marcus's paper landed in the "checked" pile with a B- and a generic "Keep practicing!" scrawled at the top.
It wasn't until three weeks later that I noticed the pattern.
Marcus wasn't making random errors. He understood fractions perfectly—but he consistently confused the division and multiplication symbols. Every single "wrong" answer was actually right if you swapped the operation. This wasn't a conceptual gap. It was likely a visual processing issue that nobody had caught.
By the time I realized it, we'd moved on to decimals. Marcus had internalized that he was "just okay at math." And I had missed the window to help him when it mattered.
That moment haunted me.
The Grading Trap
Here's what nobody tells you in education school: grading isn't just time-consuming—it's exhausting in a way that steals from everything else.
I calculated it once. Between weekly quizzes, unit assessments, and homework checks, I was spending 6-8 hours per week just grading math. That's an entire workday, every week, doing something that felt mechanical and joyless.
And the worst part? The feedback I was giving wasn't even good.
By paper number 15, I was operating on autopilot. Check, check, X, check. "Nice work." "See me." "Review your steps." I wasn't analyzing student thinking—I was surviving.
My students deserved better. I deserved better.
The Day Everything Changed
I'll be honest: when my colleague mentioned AutoGrading, I was skeptical.
"AI can't understand how kids think," I told her. "Math isn't just right or wrong. It's about the process."
She smiled and said, "Just try it with one quiz."
So I did. I uploaded a 10-question fractions assessment for my 26 students. Scanned the handwritten papers, hit submit, and waited.
Forty-three seconds later, I had results.
But it wasn't the speed that made me emotional—it was what the system saw.
AutoGrading had flagged three students who were making the same conceptual error: treating the denominator as a separate whole number instead of part of the fraction. It showed me exactly which step their understanding broke down. It gave partial credit where reasoning was solid but calculation slipped.
And for Marcus—if I'd had this tool two years ago—it would have caught that symbol confusion on day one.
I sat at my desk and cried. Not because I was overwhelmed. Because I finally felt like I could actually teach.
What I Do With the Extra Time
That was eight months ago. Here's what my weeks look like now:
Monday: Instead of staying late to grade the weekend homework, I spend 15 minutes reviewing AutoGrading's mastery report over my morning coffee. I walk into class knowing exactly which three students need support with place value—before they even sit down.
Wednesday: Quiz day. Students finish by 10:15. By 10:20, I have results. By 10:30, I'm pulling a small group to the back table to reteach while the rest of the class moves into practice. Same-day intervention. That never happened before.
Thursday: I used to cancel our "Math Investigations" time because I was behind on grading. Now, it's the highlight of our week. Students work on open-ended challenges while I circulate, ask questions, and actually listen to how they think.
Friday afternoon: I leave at 4:00. My son has soccer practice at 4:30. I make it. Every week.
What My Students Notice
Kids are perceptive. They know when you're present and when you're just going through the motions.
A few weeks after I started using AutoGrading, one of my students—a girl named Priya who rarely speaks up—raised her hand during a lesson.
"Mrs. Mitchell," she said, "you seem happier this year."
I didn't know what to say. So I just told her the truth: "I have more time to actually be your teacher now."
She nodded like that made perfect sense.
And maybe it does. Maybe kids understand, better than we give them credit for, that teaching isn't about papers and grades. It's about being there.
It's Not About Replacing Teachers
I want to be clear about something: AutoGrading doesn't teach my class. It doesn't make instructional decisions. It doesn't know that Jaylen needs extra encouragement or that Sofia works best when she can stand at her desk.
What it does is take the mechanical, repetitive part of my job—the part that drained me—and handle it in seconds. So I can do the part that only a human can do.
I notice more. I intervene faster. I have energy left at 3:00 PM to really see my students instead of counting the hours until I can collapse on the couch.
Marcus taught me that every student has a story in their work—if you have time to read it.
Now, I finally do.
For Teachers Who Are Skeptical (Like I Was)
If you're reading this and thinking, "That sounds too good to be true," I get it. I was you eight months ago.
Here's what I'd say: try it with one assessment. Just one. See what the system catches that you might have missed. See how it feels to get your results in under a minute instead of under a mountain of papers.
And then ask yourself: what would you do with 6 extra hours every week?
For me, the answer was simple.
I'd spend them with my students.
Sarah Mitchell has been teaching elementary math for 13 years. She lives in Ohio with her husband, two kids, and a very patient golden retriever named Euler. She is a MIPPCO AutoGrading Founding Member.
Ready to get your time back? [Join the Founding Member Waitlist →]
Want me to adjust the tone, change the teacher's grade level or name, or create a version formatted specifically for your blog platform
A teacher's story about rediscovering why she fell in love with teaching
By Sarah Mitchell, 4th Grade Math Teacher | Lincoln Elementary School
There's a moment every teacher knows too well.
It's 7:43 PM on a Tuesday. You're sitting at the kitchen table, surrounded by a stack of 28 math assessments. Your coffee went cold an hour ago. Your own kids finished dinner without you—again. And somewhere between problem 12 and problem 13, you realize you've written "Good effort!" for the fifteenth time because your brain simply can't form original thoughts anymore.
That was me, every week, for eleven years.
I didn't become a teacher to grade papers. I became a teacher because of Marcus.
The Student I Almost Missed
Marcus was a quiet kid in my third-period class two years ago. He sat in the back, turned in his work on time, and scored somewhere in the middle on every assessment. He was easy to overlook—not struggling enough to flag, not excelling enough to celebrate.
One Thursday afternoon, I was rushing through a stack of fraction assessments during my lunch break. I had exactly 22 minutes before my next class. Marcus's paper landed in the "checked" pile with a B- and a generic "Keep practicing!" scrawled at the top.
It wasn't until three weeks later that I noticed the pattern.
Marcus wasn't making random errors. He understood fractions perfectly—but he consistently confused the division and multiplication symbols. Every single "wrong" answer was actually right if you swapped the operation. This wasn't a conceptual gap. It was likely a visual processing issue that nobody had caught.
By the time I realized it, we'd moved on to decimals. Marcus had internalized that he was "just okay at math." And I had missed the window to help him when it mattered.
That moment haunted me.
The Grading Trap
Here's what nobody tells you in education school: grading isn't just time-consuming—it's exhausting in a way that steals from everything else.
I calculated it once. Between weekly quizzes, unit assessments, and homework checks, I was spending 6-8 hours per week just grading math. That's an entire workday, every week, doing something that felt mechanical and joyless.
And the worst part? The feedback I was giving wasn't even good.
By paper number 15, I was operating on autopilot. Check, check, X, check. "Nice work." "See me." "Review your steps." I wasn't analyzing student thinking—I was surviving.
My students deserved better. I deserved better.
The Day Everything Changed
I'll be honest: when my colleague mentioned AutoGrading, I was skeptical.
"AI can't understand how kids think," I told her. "Math isn't just right or wrong. It's about the process."
She smiled and said, "Just try it with one quiz."
So I did. I uploaded a 10-question fractions assessment for my 26 students. Scanned the handwritten papers, hit submit, and waited.
Forty-three seconds later, I had results.
But it wasn't the speed that made me emotional—it was what the system saw.
AutoGrading had flagged three students who were making the same conceptual error: treating the denominator as a separate whole number instead of part of the fraction. It showed me exactly which step their understanding broke down. It gave partial credit where reasoning was solid but calculation slipped.
And for Marcus—if I'd had this tool two years ago—it would have caught that symbol confusion on day one.
I sat at my desk and cried. Not because I was overwhelmed. Because I finally felt like I could actually teach.
What I Do With the Extra Time
That was eight months ago. Here's what my weeks look like now:
Monday: Instead of staying late to grade the weekend homework, I spend 15 minutes reviewing AutoGrading's mastery report over my morning coffee. I walk into class knowing exactly which three students need support with place value—before they even sit down.
Wednesday: Quiz day. Students finish by 10:15. By 10:20, I have results. By 10:30, I'm pulling a small group to the back table to reteach while the rest of the class moves into practice. Same-day intervention. That never happened before.
Thursday: I used to cancel our "Math Investigations" time because I was behind on grading. Now, it's the highlight of our week. Students work on open-ended challenges while I circulate, ask questions, and actually listen to how they think.
Friday afternoon: I leave at 4:00. My son has soccer practice at 4:30. I make it. Every week.
What My Students Notice
Kids are perceptive. They know when you're present and when you're just going through the motions.
A few weeks after I started using AutoGrading, one of my students—a girl named Priya who rarely speaks up—raised her hand during a lesson.
"Mrs. Mitchell," she said, "you seem happier this year."
I didn't know what to say. So I just told her the truth: "I have more time to actually be your teacher now."
She nodded like that made perfect sense.
And maybe it does. Maybe kids understand, better than we give them credit for, that teaching isn't about papers and grades. It's about being there.
It's Not About Replacing Teachers
I want to be clear about something: AutoGrading doesn't teach my class. It doesn't make instructional decisions. It doesn't know that Jaylen needs extra encouragement or that Sofia works best when she can stand at her desk.
What it does is take the mechanical, repetitive part of my job—the part that drained me—and handle it in seconds. So I can do the part that only a human can do.
I notice more. I intervene faster. I have energy left at 3:00 PM to really see my students instead of counting the hours until I can collapse on the couch.
Marcus taught me that every student has a story in their work—if you have time to read it.
Now, I finally do.
For Teachers Who Are Skeptical (Like I Was)
If you're reading this and thinking, "That sounds too good to be true," I get it. I was you eight months ago.
Here's what I'd say: try it with one assessment. Just one. See what the system catches that you might have missed. See how it feels to get your results in under a minute instead of under a mountain of papers.
And then ask yourself: what would you do with 6 extra hours every week?
For me, the answer was simple.
I'd spend them with my students.
Sarah Mitchell has been teaching elementary math for 13 years. She lives in Ohio with her husband, two kids, and a very patient golden retriever named Euler. She is a MIPPCO Auto Grading Founding Member.
Ready to get your time back? [Join the Founding Members →]
Want me to adjust the tone, change the teacher's grade level or name, or create a version formatted specifically for your blog platform