This day in age, old school grading seems archaic, and something that neither professors nor teacher assistants want to take the time to do.

Paul Abumov felt so strongly about revolutionizing the task of grading, that he took matters into his own hands and created ScribeSense.

ScribeSense is an online service that automates the grading process while providing useful insight on the overall class performance. Teachers can scan their answer key along with completed student tests and then e-mail them to the ScribeSense platform. From this point on, ScribeSense’s unique algorithm automatically grades the tests and sends the results back to the professor.

“ScribeSense hits the middle ground: it is intelligent enough to process short-form answers just like they appear in a “normal” hand-graded test,” Abumov said.

“And students can get back their test results quickly, so they can go over the results the same day.”

A recent pilot of ScribeSense at SMU showed professors and students alike that grading tests and papers is being revolutionized. Abumov said it was a “no brainer” to test the program in David
Croson’s classroom.

“One of the first university professors I’ve met in Dallas was Dr. Croson of SMU, and he impressed me with the breadth of his intelligence in our first conversation,” Abumov said. “Then, of course, SMU is a highly-regarded university and it’s an honor for us to work with it.”

Croson was extremely pleased with his trial.

“ScribeSense is especially useful in the large core classes, where students have a quiz every week and would like to get rapid feedback on how they’re doing in the class. I can’t imagine teaching 100 students without it,” Croson said.

Students who took part in Croson’s trial also had an overwhelmingly positive response to the program.

“Majority preferred the new format of questions over tired ABCDE, and all of them were amazed with the quick turnaround time,” Abumov said.

Kalen Schou, a teaching assistant for SMU Professor Michael Lysko, believes that a tool like this would greatly benefit SMU, but is skeptical about the program being able to understand the student’s answers.

“It would work for questions with a definitive answer such as multiple choice questions or matching questions, but a computer is not capable of understanding and grading a student’s thoughts when it came to short answer and essay questions,” Schou said.

ScribeSense is already being used by University of California, Santa Cruz; a pilot trial is underway at the University of North Texas. The grading system will be released this fall, and Abumov believes now is the perfect time for SMU to take advantage of the program. The company is hopeful that more professors like Croson will make it a permanent part of their classroom.

“Student’s don’t see the amount of time that goes into grading, so saving that time doesn’t matter much to them, but it certainly does to me,” Croson said.