Key question addressed in each chapter of Truth and Consequences
Introduction by Patricia Freitag Ericsson and Richard H. Haswell: Can a book about machine graders "raise questions that will help set the future agenda for debate and action on automated essay scoring"?
Chapter one "Interested Complicities: The Dialectic of Computer-Assisted Writing Assessment" by Ken S. McAllister and Edward M. White: How has the passivity of humanists in fact aided the growth of computer-assisted writing assessment, and what do they need to do to not be "sent out of the room when serious discussion" is undertaken about this technology?
Chapter two "The Meaning of Meaning: Is a Paragraph More than an Equation" by Patricia Freitag Ericsson: How do machines allege to make meaning out of writing--how do these programs work?
Chapter three "Can't Touch This: Reflections on the Servitude of Computers as Readers" by Chris M. Anson: Why is it currently (and for the foreseeable future) impossible to replace humans readers with machines?
Chapter four "Automatons and Automated Scoring: Drudges, Black Boxes, and Dei Ex Machina" by Richard H. Haswell: How did college writing teachers become helpless in the face of the growth of automated essay scoring, and how can they end this "deer-in-the-headlights stance"?
Chapter five "Taking a Spin on the Intelligent Essay Assessor" by Tim McGee: What does a teacher's experimentation with one scoring engine reveal about the limitations of this technology "to score student essays well"?
Chapter six "ACCUPLACER's Essay-Scoring Technology: When Reliability Does Not Equal Validity" by Edmund Jones: Why should reliability and validity be separated "to some degree" in placement essay scoring, and what are the implications for the use of machine graders for writing placement?
Chapter seven "WritePlacer Plus in Place: An Exploratory Case Study" by Anne Herrington and Charles Moran: Does WriterPlacer "evaluate what it aims to evaluate"? How has the use of computers to score placement essays created a two-class system in education, where the "wealthy and connected" can write for people while the "poor and uneducated" write for scoring machines?
Chapter eight "E-Write as a Means for Placement into Three Composition Courses: A Pilot Study" by Richard N. Matzen Jr. and Colleen Sorensen: What did a pilot study of e-Write for placement in three composition courses show about the reliability of the program and its accuracy compared to traditional placement methods?
Chapter nine "Computerized Writing Assessment: Community College Faculty Find Reasons to Say 'Not Yet'" by William W. Ziegler: How does using COMPASS e-Write to place students eliminate many useful functions of human readers, and why might community colleges never be ready for machine-driven placement?
Chapter ten "Piloting the COMPASS E-Write Software at Jackson State Community College" by Teri T. Maddox: Why did a community college vote to stop using e-Write for placement?
Chapter eleven "The Role of the Writing Coordinator in a Culture of Placement by ACCUPLACER" by Gail S. Corso: Despite its value in some areas, how might the use of machine-driven placement contradict one of the core mission values of a college, the human factor in education?
Chapter twelve "Always Already: Automated Essay Scoring and Grammar-Checkers in College Writing Courses" by Carl Whithaus: How do we already use technology agents to read and evaluate our writing, and why does the blanket rejection of software "not serve composition teachers or students"?
Chapter thirteen "Automated Essay Grading in the Sociology Classroom: Finding Common Ground" by Edward Brent and Martha Townsend: How can a collaboration between a sociologist who created an AI evaluator and his campus' writing program administrator demonstrate that machine-scored writing can have a place in the university?
Chapter fourteen "Automated Writing Instruction: Computer-Assisted or Computer-Driven Pedagogies?" by Beth Ann Rothermel: How can teachers use computer graders to as "subjects of inquiry" in writing pedagogy courses?
Chapter fifteen "Why Less Is Not More: What We Lose by Letting a Computer Score Writing Samples" by William Condon: How does machine scoring "take us back to a time when assessment was nothing but a big stick for beating up on teachers"?
Chapter sixteen "More Work for Teacher? Possible Futures of Teaching Writing in the Age of Computerized Writing Assessment" by Bob Broad: How can teachers educate themselves so they can fight in defense of human-based writing assessment as superior to computerization?
Chapter seventeen "A Bibliography of Machine Scoring of Student Writing, 1962-2005" by Richard H. Haswell: Where can you learn more about machine scoring of student writing?