With the recent release of Chat-GPT by OpenAI, the automated text generation capabilities of GPT-3 are seen as transformative and potentially systemically disruptive for higher education. While the impact on teaching and learning practices is still unknown, it is apparent that alongside risks these tools offer the potential to augment human…

This history of computer text analysis of student writing while brief, is complicated by the fact that there are actually three distinct efforts underway to use the computer for such purposes. There is a certain amount of overlap among the efforts, but their intentions are different enough to warrant separate review. The first effort is toward…