Quick Summary

Table of Contents

Introduction

According to a survey, on average, a teacher works around 54 hours per week, from which they spend around 5 hours in grading and checking the papers and tests of students. Even after spending this much time in grading, many times they can’t do it effectively because of the huge number of papers and assignments. They start checking tests with good intentions and efforts but,end up just checking major points and writing common suggestions. The bigger the organization or school you have, the more students you will have and the more problems you might face with the traditional grading process.

The advanced solution to this modern problem is an automated grading system, also known as an AI grading system. Yes, like every other industry, AI is changing the ways of doing many different tasks in the education industry. This AI-powered grading system can leverage advanced technologies like Natural language processing (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML) to make the grading process more effective and efficient in less time. Big institutes and EdTech businesses are increasingly exploring such grading systems to save time, reduce human error, and provide personalized feedback to students.

If it sounds interesting to you, but you don’t know where to start or how much it will cost you to develop an AI-powered automated grading system, then don’t worry; you are at the right place. Here, we will discuss the benefits and features of automated grading systems and, most importantly, the cost of building one. But before all this, let’s understand an automated grading system. So, let’s dive into the topic.

What is an Automated Grading System?

An automated grading system is an advanced tool that uses advanced technologies to grade students’works, including tests, papers, and assignments. It ensures that the entire grading process can be done with minimum human effort. Which makes the grading process fast, easy, and convenient for teachers. And because of this, teachers and professors can get extra time to develop new and interesting teaching methods. Now, let’s see how the entire System works.

How does it work?

• Upload Work: Your students can easily upload their work, such as assignments, tests, or essays, online using this tool. This System will start evaluating the work of students on the basis of prebuild rules.
• Grading Rules for Simple Questions: The System is best for multiple-choice or fill-in-the-blank questions because it can be compared with a pre-set answer key that the teachers themselves upload to this System.
• AI for Complex Tasks: If you are wondering how it will check complex tasks like essays, papers, and assignments, Then don’t worry because the System uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to assess the content in terms of grammar, structure, or how well students have answered the question—the same way a teacher assesses the overall quality.
• Immediate Result and Feedback: The best part of the System is that it can immediately send the grade to teachers, students, or their parents via SMS or mail, as you want.

Thus, it helps teachers streamline the entire grading process and save time. Now, let’s discuss why your teaching institute needs an AI-powered automated grading system. In this answer, you will also find the benefits of this System

Benefits of AI-powered Automated Grading System?

All the teachers who are reading this blog, if you don’t want to spend hours and hours at night with one full cup of coffee checking the bunch of tests and papers, then you should consider this automated grading system. Let’s see all the benefits that you can leverage with an AI grading system.

Automation of Repetitive Tasks

The main advantage of AI in grading is the automation of repetitive and rule-based tasks. It’s not a good idea to let the creativity of teachers die by making them occupied with repetitive tasks like grading multiple-choice questions and checking thousands of papers. Because the automated grading system can handle all of these tasks, It can minimize all teachers’ manual efforts, reduce errors, and improve accuracy.

Time-Saving

This result is a byproduct of the first advantage, which is the automation of repetitive work. It is very obvious that when you let machines do your daily repetitive tasks, you will get some more time. Teachers can utilize this time for more productive work, like setting up good papers or bringing new and interesting topics to the classroom.

Instant Feedback

It takes weeks and months to evaluate all the papers and provide the right feedback to students at a time. But heare AI-powered automated grading systems make the assessment process fast. With this, students get grades and feedback almost immediately after submission. Fast feedback helps students quickly understand their strengths and areas for improvement. The rapid assessment and responses support students’ faster learning and growth.

Fair and Consistent Grading

Not intensely, but humans can sometimes get based on favorite students or get emotional, or because of tiredness, the results may get impacted. However, AI ensures unbiased grading by applying the same criteria to all students. It eliminates the risk of human fatigue or subjective judgment. This promotes a fair assessment environment.

Scalability

The one significant advantage of AI-powered systems is that they can handle large volumes of student work. If, in the future, the number of students or the amount of work increases, this System can easily scale. This will ensure consistent performance regardless of workload size. This scalability will support your growing organization’s demands.

Features of AI Grading System

AI adds different and advanced features to the grading system, bringing advantages to your institute above. And it’s before the costing part you should be aware of the different benefits of this automated grading system. So following is the list of some of the most important features.

Multi-Language Support: It can evaluate submissions in multiple languages. That makes it suitable for every educational board.
Handwriting Recognition: Your students don’t need to submit computer-written copies. This system can analyze handwritten assignments or tests and grade them efficiently.

Adaptive Learning Integration: This System can learn, so you can link grading insights and recommendations for personalized student learning paths.

Question Bank Support: It Allows educators to upload and manage an enormous question bank for automated tests and grading.

Plagiarism Detection: It can quickly identify copied content in assignments or tests to ensure originality.

Error Highlighting: Highlights mistakes directly in student submissions, making it easy to see where improvements are needed.

Offline Compatibility: You don’t need to worry about network connections. It offers features that work offline and sync data once connected to the internet.

Now that you have enough information about this automated grading system, we can move toward the most anticipated part of the article: the cost. You all will be wondering what the cost of building an AI-powered grading system from scratch will be. So now, let’s discuss this.

Cost to Develop an AI-powered Automated Grading System

Many factors affect the cost of software solutions. Your requirements and need for advanced features will be the most important factors in deciding the cost. So, let’s discuss the factors that can influence the cost of automated grading systems.

Key Factors That Can Influence the Cost

Features and Complexity

It is very obvious that basic features like multiple-choice grading will be less expensive. But if you want some advanced AI features that can learn from different patterns and evaluate detailed assignments, then it can cost you a bit. Because it requires sophisticated technologies.

2.Technology Stack

When we talk about integrating AI into the grading system, we are not just talking about AI; we need to integrate different branches of AI technologies like Machine Learning (ML) and Natural Language Processing (NLP). This integration significantly impacts cost because of the development complexity and third-party tool usage.

3.Development Team

You will need a dedicated software development team with AI expertise to develop an advanced AI grading system. The cost depends on the size and expertise of the team, which may include project managers, AI/ML engineers, software developers, and testers.

4. Design and User Experience

This is also simple math: If you want a basic and simple interface, it will cost you less. But if you want to go with an intuitive and highly interactive design that attracts students, it will definitely add some extra dollars.

5. Infrastructure and Maintenance

Every software system needs maintenance, which can add some additional costs. Cloud hosting, storage, and periodic updates ensure the system’s scalability and longevity, so you should invest in it.

At bacancy, we have built fully automated grading systems with AI expertise for different clients. So, from those experiences and the above factors, here is an estimated background of the cost of building an automated grading system.

Final Estimation

If we combine all the factors and try to get a final estimation, then education institute or organizations the cost to develop an AI-powered automated grading system typically falls into these ranges:

Basic System: $30,000–$50,000
Advanced System with AI Features: $60,000–$100,000

(Note: This price estimation may vary depending on different factors, such as countries and development companies.)

Conclusion