By Isabel Lee
Contributing Writer
On February 27th, an email was sent out by Mira Costa teacher Matthew Wheeler, informing parents and students of the English Department’s adoption of a new policy regarding the grading of written assignments- an adjustment made due to increasingly restrictive time constraints. Costa Sophomore John Tian may have the workings of a solution: an AI grading program.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that English teachers at Mira Costa have been strained timewise by their grading load. Wheeler’s email had been a response to the MBUSD School Board’s imposition of a guideline that now requires assignments to be graded within 3 weeks of their submission. According to the announcement, the addition is leaving an “inequitable” effect on the English Department.
“We recognize that feedback is invaluable to the writing process,” Wheeler said. “[However,] the English Department has come to the conclusion that in order to meet the demands of these new Board-mandated stipulations, we can no longer provide written feedback on assignments.”
The situation is just one example of a larger issue for teachers in general- their struggle to grade mass amounts of work in limited time frames. This was what caught Tian’s attention, and what motivated him to create GradeWithAI. He had started the project his freshmen year, already having been enrolled in AP Computer Science A.
“It began with Mr. Braskin and his need to grade AP CSA FRQs faster. We wanted a way for students to get instant feedback.” said Tian, “It was while I was working on it that I realized it could be used for more.”
Now, in his sophomore year, Tian advertises GradeWithAI as an easy-to-use tool that prioritizes efficiency and convenience for teachers. The program is a “one-click setup”, meaning actions that may cause technical difficulties, such as importing and exporting, are avoided.
“A teacher just has to choose an assignment, enable the features they want, provide their rubric, and choose a template to complete the setup,” said Tian. “We even mitigate the need to use Turnitin by having a highly accurate AI detector and plagiarism scanner.”
While the program’s benefits are impressive, other students at Costa have doubts about its capabilities. According to sophomore Isabel Boroch, she sympathizes with the English Department’s situation, but does not wholly trust AI.
“I don’t know if I’d completely take the feedback that AI would give me, because I feel like it’d make mistakes,” Boroch said. “While it does have the proficiency of technology, it lacks the experience of a teacher in the classroom”.
Tian assures otherwise. As of now, he claims GradeWithAI has a proven accuracy rate of 98% regarding AI usage detection in written work.
“We scan billions of websites and student text to generate a plagiarism report showing where exactly the work was found and the percentage plagiarized,” Tian said.
Throughout his efforts to cater said program to other subjects, Tian has made it clear that GradeWithAI is not meant to replace teachers, nor do their job for them, merely act as an assistant. He has other goals in mind, one of which is to ensure that students receive an immediate response to their work.
“It’s difficult for students, especially me, to learn after turning in an essay and getting it back 4-5 weeks later,” said Tian, “The comments are good, but they mean less after so much time.”
He had spent a week building the initial version of the program, and 200-300 hours making improvements. To deal with the growing workload, Tian created a team of his own, including Costa Sophomore Dylan Feakins. Feakins, who takes care of the team’s business and finance, voiced his belief in their cause.
“We’re in an r&d phase so I am mostly helping with demos and finding ways to make our product more useful for teachers,” Feakins said. “It allows [them] to spend less time grading and more time teaching, which will help students be more successful”.
Recently, the team presented at a Costa Staff meeting, introducing AI and plagiarism detection, new features recently implemented into GradeWithAI. In the short time since, they’ve executed yet another addition: “Individual Quizzes”. With the extension, teachers can now generate personalized quiz questions based on a student’s work, ensuring its honest completion. Still, Tian is always thinking about the next step.
“I want to get to the point where students submit [their assignments] and the AI will grade automatically,” Tian said, “The next step is to allow for teachers to directly edit the feedback and score, and give it back to the students.”
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