Essay-type CSAT Graded by AI? We Took the Test Ourselves

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The Presidential National Education Commission is considering introducing essay and subjective-type questions to the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) and grading them using artificial intelligence.

Reporter Jeong Banseok took the test himself to see if this method can be trusted and what areas need improvement.

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A high school in Gyeonggi Province is currently utilizing AI to grade performance assessments.

With the school's permission, our reporting team attended a class alongside the students.

[Lee Yoon-gyu / Science Teacher, Pyeongtaek Cheongbuk High School: Today, we will learn about the conditions under which fossils are formed.]

After solving a subjective-type test question with the first-year students here, we will receive AI grading.

Once the completed answer sheets are scanned, the text is automatically recognized, and grading is completed in less than a minute based on the grading criteria previously set by the teacher.

Final score adjustments are up to the teacher.

[Lee Yoon-gyu / Science Teacher, Pyeongtaek Cheongbuk High School: The first reason they provided is incorrect. The AI judged it as 4 points, but I think I would give it 3 points.]

Out of a possible 10 points, the reporting team received 7 points, and the students received 8 points.

There is the advantage of reducing the time spent examining poor handwriting from some students.

[Lee Yoon-gyu / Science Teacher, Pyeongtaek Cheongbuk High School: It used to take all day just to grade. Now, grading one class takes anywhere from a short 30 minutes to an hour. Now, it even reads graphs and tables.]

Answer sheets graded by AI in schools under the jurisdiction of the Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education have reached 3.37 million cases over the past year.

However, a survey of 105 teachers revealed a problem where scores for the exact same answer sheet changed every time it was graded by AI.

As a result, teachers gave lower scores to the consistency and reliability of the grading compared to other categories.

There are also concerns that it could fuel private education.

[Kim Hee-jung / Spokesperson, Teachers' Union Federation & High School Korean Language Teacher: AI is still nowhere near the level where it can grade things involving context or background knowledge. Above all, there are already a tremendous number of complaints at school sites regarding essay and subjective-type questions. People even bring in doctoral dissertations from academies asking why one is accepted while another is not.]

The National Education Commission's stance is to review the introduction of essay and subjective-type questions to the CSAT as early as 2032, subject to a public consensus process.

While AI technology will advance in the meantime, building trust among students and parents remains the top priority, given that hundreds of thousands take the CSAT simultaneously and admissions are decided by a single point.

(Camera: Joo Yong-jin, Video Editing: Kim Jin-won, Design: Kim Min-young)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.